Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the "Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum" (Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations) [Second Edition] 9781501711879

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SYMPHONIA

Saint Hildegard of Bingen

SYMPHONIA A Critical Edition of the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum [Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations] WITH INTRODUCTION, TRANSLATIONS, ANO COMMENTARY BY

BARBARA NEWMAN SECOND EDITION

Cornell University Press lthaca and London

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES A GRANT FROM THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION THAT AIDED IN BRINGING THIS BOOK TO PUBLICATION

Copyright C 1988, 1998 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, su. East State Street, Ithaca, New York 148so. First edition published 1988 by Cornell University Press. Second edition published 1998.

Cornell University Press strives to usc environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are also either recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hildegard, Saint, I098-1179· [Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum. English and Latin.] Symphonia : a critical edition of the Symphonia armonie cclestium revclationum (Symphony of the harmony of celestial revelations]/ Saint Hildegard of Bingen; with introduction, translations, and commentary by Barbara Newman. 1nd ed. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. English and Latin. ISBN-13: 978-o-8o14-8S47·3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-xo: o-8oi4-8547-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Hymns, Latin (Medieval and modern) 1. Chants (Plain, Gregorian, etc.) I. Newman, Barbara, 1953- . II. Title. 781.2.5'o168-dcu 98-9609

Paperback printing

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Cover illustration: Hildegard of Bingen , wood polychrome sculpture (14th century), church of St. Peter and Paul, Mtinster-Sarmsheim (diocese of Trier). Reproduced by permission.

Omnis caelestis harmonia speculum divinitatis est, et horno speculum omnium miraculorum est Dei. All celestial harmony is a mirror of divinity, and man is a mirror of all the miracles of God, SAINT HILDEGARD,

Causes and Cures

Contents

xi

PREFACE INTROOUCTION

I

Biographical Sketch 1 Composition and Dating of the Symphonia 6 The Symphonia in the Monastic Liturgy 12 Aesthetics and Theology of Music 17 Musical Style and Performance 27 Poetic Style 3 2 Themes of the Symphonia 45 The Manuscripts and the Order of Songs J 1 The Text and Translations 6o LIST OF MANUSCRIPTS

64

ÜROER OF SONGS IN THE MANUSCRIPTS

65

APPENDIX: The Symphonia and the "Epilogue to the Life of Saint Rupert"

68

MUSIC ANO TEXT IN HILOEGARO'S ANTIPHONS

74

Sympbonia armonie celestium revelationum

95

by Marianne Richert Pfau

TEXT ANO TRANSLATIONS

l.

FATHER ANO SoN 1.

2..

O vis eternitatis 98 O virtus Sapientie roo

97

Vll

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Contents

3· O quam mirabilis

4· O pastor animarum

zoo zoz

S· O cruor sanguinis 102. 6. O magne Pater 104 7· O eterne Deus zo6

11.

MoTHER AND SoN

109

8. Ave Maria uo 9· O darissima mater u 2. 10. O splendidissima gemma II4 II. Hodie aperuit u6 u. Quía ergo femina II 6 13. Cum processit factura z z 8 14. Cum erubuerint u8 1 s. O frondens virga no 16. O quam magnum miraculum no 17. Ave generosa n2. 18. O virga mediatrix n4 19. O viridissima virga n6 2.0. O virga ac diadema n8 2.1. O tu suavissima virga 132. 2.2.. O quam preciosa z 34 23. O tu illustrata zJ6

111.

THE HOLY SPIRIT

139

2.4. Spiritus sanctus vivificans vita

2s. Karitas habundat 140 2.6. Laus Trinitati 142. 2.7. O ignee Spiritus 142.

28. O ignis Spiritus Paraditi

IV.

140

148

3

1S

THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY

2.9. O gloriosissimi lux vivens angeli

30. 3 1. 32. 33· 34· 35.

O O O O O O

vos angeli IJ6 spectabiles viri r J 8 vos felices radices z6o cohors milicie floris z62. lucidissima apostolorum turba speculum columbe z66

154

164

ix

Contents 36. O dulcís electe z68 37· O victoriosissimi triumphatores 38. Vos flores rosarum z72 39· O vos imitatores I74 40. O successores z76

z7o

179

V. PATRON SAINTS

41. O mirum admirandum

42.. 43· 44· 45· 46. 47· 48. 49·

so.

SI· 52.. 53. 54·

z8o

O viriditas digiti Dei z82 O felix anima z84 O beata infantia z84 O presul vere civitatis z86 O felix apparicio z9o O beatissime Ruperte z9o Quia felix puericia z92 O Ierusalem 192. Mathias sanctus z98 O Bonifaci 2.04 O Euchari columba 2.06 O Euchari in leta via 2.08 Columba aspexit 2.u

VI. VIRGINS, WIDOWS, ANO INNOCENTS

55. O pulcre facies z.z 8 s6. nobilissima viriditas

o

2.17

z.z8

57· O dulcissime amator 2.20 58. O Pater omnium 224 59· Rex noster promptus 226

VII.

SAINT URSULA ANO COMPANIONS

6o. 6 1. 62.. 63.

Spiritui sancto 2.30 O rubor sanguinis 2. 3 2. Favus distillans 234 Antiphons for Matins 2.36 Studium divinitatis Unde quocumque De patria Deus enim in prima Aer enim volat

2.2.9

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Contents

Et ideo puelle Deus enim rorem Sed diabolus 64. O Ecclesia 2.38 6 s. Cum vox sanguinis 2.44

VIII. ECCLESIA 66. O virgo Ecclesia 2.50 67. Nunc gaudeant 2.52. 68. O orzchis Ecclesia 2.52. 69. O choruscans lux stellarum 2.54

2.49

~OUR SONGS WITHOUT MUSIC

2.57

O O O O

Verbum Patris 2.58 Fili dilectissime z6o factura Dei 2.62. magna res 2.64

COMMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY DISCOGRAPHY

Preface

Twenty years ago only a handful of medievalists knew the name of Saint Hildegard of Bingen. But no sooner do contemporary tastes change than the past takes on new contours. Names from the margins of our historical awareness are rediscovered, illumined, shihed toward center. So it was that, with the help of a few art historians, the forgotten Georges de la Tour suddenly became a painter of the first rank. So it was that Felix Mendelssohn "discovered" Johann Sebastian Bach; Franz Pfeiffer discovered Meister Eckhart; and a sisterhood of nuns discovered Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard, whose personal fame reached from England to Byzantium during her lifétime (1098-r 179), has always had admirers in her native Germany. But her reputation suffered eclipse not long aher her death. Though celebrated throughout the Middle Ages as an apocalyptic prophet, she was all but forgotten as a versatile writer, composer~ and scientist. Between the Reformation and the early twentieth century, an occasional author hailed her as a great woman, a great saint, or a great German. Flurries of publication marked the 750th anniversary of her death in 192.9 and the octocentennial in 1979. But her belated emergence as a major representative of twelfth-century civilization owes most to two factors: the feminist quest for a canon, and the critical scholxi

xii

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arship of the nuns at St. Hildegard's Abbey in Eibingen. Sister Maura Bockeler, who was attempting to revive and modernize Hildegard's distim:tive theology, published a German translation of her most famous work, the Scivias, in 192.8. Bockeler's Scivias, reprinted many times, became the first of a series; all of Hildegard's major works are now available in abridged German versions published by Otto Müller Verlag of Salzburg. In the meantime two other Eibingen nuns, Marianna Schrader and Adelgundis Führkotter, broke ground in 1956 with an important historical and paleographic study, establishing the long-contested authenticity of Hildegard's works beyond doubt. 1 Together with Angela Carlevaris, Führkotter also published a critical edition of the Scivias for the series Corpus Christianorum: continuatio mediaevalis (Turnhout, 1978). But the rest of Hildegard's works, which are extensive, remain in limbo. Most of the printed texts are poor, and for the English-speaking reader, only brief excerpts are available in trustworthy versions. Yet des pite these problems, popular interest in Hildegard is burgeoning. Herbalists have begun to use her prescriptions and diets in their medical practice. A fashionable Catholic guru salutes her, generously but falsely, as the prophet of everything from ecological justice to global ecumenism. Novels and films about her life are under way, and illustrations from her works have been cast in ceramics and needlework for Judy Chicago's mammoth exhibition The Dinner Party. Her music in particular has received fresh attention, thanks to several fine recordings by English and Continental ensembles. Peter Dronke, the author of many perceptive essays on Hildegard, finds in her songs "sorne of the most unusual, subtle, and exciting poetry of the twelfth century."2 1 believe he is right, and 1 present this edition of Hildegard's lyrics to make this extraordinary body of work available both to the scholar and to the general reader. tMarianna Schrader and Adelgundis Führkotter, Die Echtheit des Schrifttums der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen (Cologne and Graz, 1956). 2Peter Dronke, "Hildegard of Bingen as Poetess and Dramatist," in Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1970): 151.

Preface

xiii

This volume contains a critical text of Hildegard's poetic cycle, the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum [Symphony of the harmony of celestial revelations], together with two sets of facing-page translations, one in plain prose and the other in free verse. lt is recommended that the general reader begin with the verse translations. The prose versions are offered partly as a corrective to my poetic license, but principally as an aid to the student who is trying to decipher Hildegard's rewarding but peculiar and often bewildering Latín. These prose versions are quoted in the examples throughout the introduction. The commentary at the end of the book includes manuscript information along with a discussion of each individual poem. For the benefit of musicologists and singers, it also provides cross-references to the German edition of Hildegard's music. 3 All biblical citations refer to the Vulgate. 1 thank the librarians at the Hessische Landesbibliothek in Wiesbaden and the Bibliotheek der St.-Pieters-&-Paulusabdij in Dendermonde, Belgium, for their hospitality and for providing the manuscript photographs that appear on pages 52. and 53. 1 am also grateful to the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart and the Ósterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. Oxford University Press has graciously permitted me to reprint the

stanzas by Charles Williams which appear on p. 2.82.; they are taken from Williams's play The House of the Octopus (London: Edinburgh House Press, 1945), as reprinted in his Collected Plays (London: Oxford University Press, 1963). Twelve of the poems in this volume have previously appeared, in slightly different form, as an appendix to my earlier study, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley: University of California Press, r987). Parts of the introduction have appeared in Arts & Sciences, a magazine published by Northwestern University (Fall r987). This project would not have been possible without a travel lPudentiana Barth, M.-1. Ritscher, and joseph Schmidt-Gorg, eds., Hildegard von Bingefl: Lieder (Salzburg, 1969).

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grant from Northwestern University, for which 1 am deeply grateful As a literary scholar with no daim to expertise in music, 1 offer my observations on Hildegard's musical style with sorne trepidation. My particular thanks are due to the musicians and musicologists who have saved me from many errors and offered helpful suggestions: Theodore Karp, Barbara Lachman, William Mahrt, Therese Schroeder-Sheker, and Barbara Thornton. ·Marianne Richert Pfau Kindly agreed, when this project was near completion, to let me include her essay on Hildegard's music. My husband, Richard Kieckhefer, has read the manuscript, as always, with vigilance as well as tender loving care. 1 thank Lieven Van Acker for sharing his ideas on the thorny manuscript problems discussed in the Appendix. Finally, 1 am grateful to David Myers for nerving meto "write poems" instead of pallid academic facsimiles of Hildegard's Latin. The infelicities that remain are all my own.

A Note on the Second Edition Ten years after the original publication of the Symphonia, 1 am pleased to offer the reader this second, revised edition. The bibliography and discography have been updated to include more recent editions, translations, studies, and recordings of Hildegard's works. In addition, 1 have thoroughly revised the prose translations for the benefit of readers and listeners who do not read Latin. Without departing from strict fidelity to Hildegard's texts, 1 now offer more fluent and elegant versions that do less violence to normal English syntax. Finally, in the case of a single poem (no. 2.9), 1 have changed my interpretation of the last three lines and modified my translation and comments accordingly. The other verse translations and all the Latin texts are unaltered. BARBARA NEWMAN

Evanston, Illinois

SYMPHON IA

Introduction

Biographical Sketch

Hildegard's biography is well documented, and the outlines of her eventful life are well known. 1 The scion of an ancient and noble family, she was boro in 1098 in the town of Bermersheim near Alzey, in the diocese of Mainz. As the tenth and last child of her parents, Hildebert and Mechtild, Hildegard was offered to God as a tithe. A noblewoman named Jutta, daughter of the count of Sponheim, had chosen a life of religious seclusion near the recently founded monastery of St. Disibod, and the eight-yearold Hildegard was given to this anchoress as a companion in 1106. Jutta, whom Hildegard would later characterize asan "unlearned" woman, was nonetheless literate enough to teach the girl elementary reading and singing. Their textbook was the Latín Psalter, the centerpiece of monastic prayer. Hildegard undoubtedIThe main source is a hagiographic life by the monks Gottfried of St. Disibod and Dieter of Echternach, Vita Sanctae Hildegardis, in J.·P. Migne, ed., Pa· tralagiae cursus completus: series latina, 2.11 vols. (Paris, 18.p-1864; hereafter PL), 197: 91-130; German translatian by Adelgundis Führkotter, Das Leben der heiligen Hildegard van Bingen (Düsseldorf, 1968); English translarion by Anna Silvas, "Saint liildegard of Bingen and the Vita Sanctae Hildegardis," Tjurunga: An Australasian Benedictine Review 2.9 (1985): 4-2.5; 30 (1986): 63-73; 31 (1986): 32.-41; 32. (1987): 46-59. There is a biography in German by Eduard Gronau, Hildegard van Bingen (Stein-am-Rhein, Switzerland, I98J). 1

:z.

ly became familiar with other books of the Bible and with the monastic liturgy at an early age, although she was always keenly aware that she lacked "education." She took to the religious life easily, yet by her own account she was a peculiar child: her health was always frail and she was touched from infancy by her exceptional gift of visio. This condition involved unusual and sometimes painful perceptions-such as her vision at the age of three of "a brightness so great that [her] soul trembled"-combined with a kind of clairvoyance. Without losing consciousness or ordinary perception, the girl was able to see hidden things, such as the color of a calf in its mother's womb, and to foretell the future. Hildegard retained this visio throughout her life. In her seventies, she characterized it as a nonspatial radiance that filled her visual field at all times, without impairing her natural vision. She called this radiance "the reflection of the living Light," and in it she saw both the "living Light" itself and the complex symbolic forms that fill her visionary writings. 2 She interpreted these forms with the assistance of a "voice from heaven" which addressed her in Latin, sometimes speaking for God in the first person and somctimes about him in the third. lt was this voice, Hildegard maintained, which dictated her books and letters. Vision, illness, and prophetic authority were inextricably bound together in Hildegard's life. Sorne of her physical symptoms, together with certain structural elements in her visionsflashing and scintillating lights, concentric circles, and recurrent "fortification figures"-led a historian of medicine to conjecture in 1917 that she suffered from a form of migraine.3 She was extremely sensitive to the weather, especially storms and wind; in her own view, this susceptibility or "airiness" also made her reZLetter to Guibert of Gernbloux, Ep. 1 in J.-B. Pitra, cd., Analecta sacra 8 (Monte Cassino, 1882.; hcrcaftcr Pitra): 331-33. lCharlcs Singer, "The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard," in Studies in the History and Method of Science 1 (Oxford, I!J17): 1-ss; rpt. in From Magic to Science: Essays on the Scientific Twilight (Ncw York, I!JS8): I!J!J-13!J· Thc theory has been popularized by Oliver Sacks in Migraine: Understanding a Common Disorder (Berkelcy, I!J8s): 106-8.

Introduction

3

ceptive to the mighty wind from heaven, the Holy Spirit.4 Other attacks of illness, however, were brought on by acute conflict between the commands of her divine voice and the limitations imposed by her gender and her own anxiety. Serious illnesses preceded or accompanied all the most important and frightening decisions of her life: to begin writing, to found her own monastery, to obtain financia( independence for it, to undertake her first preaching tour. Nevertheless, her determination to obey God always prevailed over her frailty, and the healings that followed action both reinforced her own conviction and helped to persuade opponents that her call was genuine. Despite her lifelong visionary experience, Hildegard did not emerge as a public figure until the age of forty-three. From adolescence through her twenties and thirties, she lived an apparently unremarkable life in a community of women, supprcssing the marks of her singularity. jutta's hermitage, like many similar retreats, had become the nucleus of a monastery as like-minded women gathered around the anchoress, and at sorne point they were formally incorporated as Benedictine nuns under the supervision of the abbot of St. Disibod. Hildegard herself took monastic vows in her teens and received the veil from Otto, bishop of Bamberg. We have no further record of her until 1 13 6, the year of jutta's death, when Hildegard was chosen abbess (magistra) in Jutta 's stead. Her election may bear witness to her family's high social position as well as to her own spiritual gihs and her emerging talent for leadership. Five years later, the abbess was stunned by a divine call that commanded her to "tell and write" what she saw and heard in her visions. 5 Although she resisted at first "on account of humility" and took to her bed in pain, the call persisted, and at last she accepted the challenge. Two close friends-the nun Richardis von 4Hildegard of Bingen, De operatione Dei [Liber divinorum operum} 3.10.38, in PL 197: 1038a. JHildegard of Bingen, Scivias, ed. Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris in Corpus Christianorum: continuatio mediaevalis, vols..43-43a (Tumhout, Belgium, 1978): 3· The two volumes are paginated continuously.

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Stade and the monk Volmar of St. Disibod, provost of her convent-provided moral support as well as physical assistance with the act of writing. In addition, Volmar served as her copyeditor, correcting her untutored and in sorne ways defective Latín without substantially altering her work. Hildegard was to remain dependent on Volmar's services until his death in 1173, six years before her own. The Scivias, fruit of these initial labors, took Hildegard ten years to complete. Based on a series of twenty-six visions, it is divided into three books that set forth the grand scheme of creation, redemption, and sanctification. Visual descriptions, often brilliantly original, alternate with much longer allegorical passages in which Hildegard's-or God's-doctrinal teaching is expounded by means of the visionary images. In 1147/48, when this book was about half-finished, Hildegard had a stroke of extraordinary good fortune. lt happened that Pope Eugenius 111, a Cistercían who had been a disciple of Bernard of Clairvaux, was attending a synod of bishops at Trier, not far from Hildegard's monastery. Less than a year earlier, Hildegard had written to Bernard, the outstanding saint of her age, to seek confirmation of her prophetic call. Bernard had encouraged her, and as he was also present at Trier, he suggested to the pope that so great a light as hers should not remain hidden under a bushel. 6 Meanwhile a delegation of clergy led by Heinrich, archbishop of Mainz-a weak prelate but a strong supporter of Hildegard-had already approached the pontiff with news of bis remarkable visionary nun. On Heinrich's urging, Eugenius sent two legates to St. Disibod to visit Hildegard and procure a copy of her writings. Having obtained it, Eugenius himself, it is said, read from the Scívias before the assembled prelates, after which he sent the abbess a letter of apostolic blessing and protection. The Synod of Trier marked the second major turning point in Hildegard's life. After her official recognition by the highest authority in the Church, she found that she had become a celebrity. Not only was her writing vindicated but her counsel was sought 6 Vita

S. Hildegardis 1.5 in PL 197: 94-95; Ep. 2.9 in ibid.: 189-90.

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by clergy and laity alike, ranging from ordinary matrons to the emperor Frederick Barbarossa to Odo of Soissons, master of theology at París. A letter from this Odo, written in 1148, indicates that Hildegard was already famous halfway across Europe, not only for her visions but also for her novel poems or songs (modos novi carminis). 7 Thus even before she finished her Scivias, which ends with a collection of liturgical songs, we· know that Hildegard was already at work on the music that she later collected in her Symphonia. In the years immediately following Trier, Hildegard's fame created new opportunities as well as new conflicts. Her sudden prestige brought a steady stream of pilgrims, and hence of revenue, to St. Disibod. At the same time it brought new aspirants to her community, and evidently Hildegard felt that she and her nuns had both physically and spiritually outgrown the double monastery. Hence she determined to start an independent foundation on a site revealed to her in a vision-the Rupertsberg, a desolate mountain slope where the river Nahe flows into the Rhine. Hildegard felt spiritually drawn to Saint Rupert, a ninth-century nobleroan whose mother had founded a monastery on this site; it had lain in ruins for centuries, but the abbess resolved to rebuild it. Her decision provoked strong opposition, however, perhaps stronger and more widespread than she had anticipated. Kuno, the abbot of St. Disibod, did not want to lose his monastery's latest source of distinction; nor did he want to lose the nuns' rich endowments; nor was he willing to let Volmar go. The nuns themselves grumbled, reluctant to leave their comfortable quarters for a life of penury in the wilderness. And sorne of the local families thought Hildegard was quite simply mad, if not possessed. In this crisis she resorted to a twofold strategy. On the one hand, she went to her two staunchest supporters, Heinrich of Mainz and the countess Richardis von Stade, mother of her favorite nun. With their help, she managed to secure permission for the move and entered into protracted negotiations for the Rupertsberg land. On the other hand, she met the monks' resistance with 7

Ep. 12.7 m PL 197: 352.a.

6

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a paralyzing illness. Lying in bed like a stone, she remained immobile even when Kuno tried to lih her bodily from the spot-a "miracle" that convinced him that he was indeed resisting God's will. Upon his conversion, she rose from her sickbed at once. Construction of the new monastery apparently began in 1148; the nuns moved in 11 so, and Heinrich of Mainz consecrated their church in 11 s2.. But despite this triumph, the early 1 1 sos were also a time of deep loss for Hildegard. Because of the Rupertsberg's initial poverty, a few disgruntled nuns left, or refused to enter, the new foundation. And in 1 1 s1 her beloved Richardis departed to become abbess of a distant community near Bremen. Hildegard's memoirs indicare that she felt abandoned and deeply betrayed, like Moses wandering in the desert. Although she appealed to the countess von Stade as well as to two archbishops and the pope himself, she was unable to prevent Richardis's defection. She did make the young woman feel guilty enough to agree to return to the Rupertsberg, but before Richardis could actually do so, she fell sick and died, leaving Hildegard penitent and grieving. 8 In 1 1 s3 the abbess lost three more protectors. Heinrich of Mainz was deposed from his see on the charge of embezzling church funds-despite Hildegard's intervention on his behalf-and in the same year Saint Bernard and Pope Eugenius died. Thus Hildegard's life was by no means serene and carefree while she was composing the jubilant songs of the Symphonia. An ailing woman in her fifties, bereaved and ridiculed, she was embroiled in a long struggle for property rights with the monks of St. Disibod, while attempting at the same time to secure the well-being of her fledgling convent. 9 Composition and Dating of the Symphonia

Hildegard had finished the Scivias in 1 1 s1, and it was not until seven years later that she began her second visionary work, the BMarianna Schrader and Adelgundis Führkotter, Die Echtheit des Schrifttums der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen (Cologne and Graz, 1956): 131-41; Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1984): 154-59· 9Letter to her congregation, printed as part of an Explanatio symboli Sancti Athanasii in PL 197: 1o6sb-67a.

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Book of Life's Merits. It is most unlikely that, during the turmoil of the usos, the abbess envisaged a sequel to the Scivias, much less the trilogy that she eventually produced. (The third and greatest volume, On the Activity of God, was the work of her old-age; she finished it in 1173 at the age of seventy-five.) But once she had taken up the heroic labor of writing-which she believed to be unprecedented for a woman-she never ceased. During the 1 1 sos she engaged in a vast correspondence and, with astonishing energy, turned her creative gifts to two widely diverse fields: natural science and music. lt is in this period that she began her encyclopedia, variously known as the Physica, the Book of Simple Medicine, or Nine Books on the Subtleties of Different Kinds of Creatures. These creatures include herbs and trees, mammals, reptiles, fishes and birds, "elements," gems, and metals, each described with reference to its wholesome or toxic properties and its medicinal uses. The work attests to a mind at once systematic, boundlessly inquisitive, and well versed in traditional but not academic medical lore. Its companion volume, the Book of Compound Medicine or Causes and Cures, deals with physical and mental diseases; it also includes extensive materia\ on sexuality, introduced through discussions of Adam and Eve. These two works are unique in Hildegard's corpus in that they claim no ·visionary inspiration. Nor did the abbess make any attempt to publish them, although they are listed in several contemporary accounts of her works. These peculiarities rhay explain their weak manuscript tradition and the confused state of the texts. Far different is the Symphonia, a work that would scarcely be ascribed to the same author if the historical record left room for doubt. As Odo of Soissons's letter reveals, Hildegard was already composing music in the 114os, and it seems likely that all her songs written before 11 51 were incorporated in the Scivias. The last "vision" recorded in that work ís not really a vision at all: it is the transcription of a celestial concert that the visionary heard when the heavens were opened to her. In the preface to this conduding segment of her work, Hildegard wrote that she had seen a "most luminous sky" in which she heard a "sound like the voice of a multitude singing in harmony, in praise of the celestial

8

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hierarchy. " 10 There follow fourteen songs in honor of the Virgin Mary, the angels, and the saints, although the Scivias manuscripts do not include their notation. After the songs comes a dramatic sketch r~presenting a pilgrim soul torn between the devil and a choir of personified Vinues. This sketch is the kernel of an engaging morality play, the Ordo virtutum (Play of Virtues), which Hildegard at sorne point expanded and set to music. lt is not clear whether she intended the complete Ordo, a son of cantata, as an independent work or as the final ponion of her cycle. lt follows the Symphonia in only one of the two manuscripts. 1 have not included the play here because a critical edition of the text, a good translation, and a performance edition are all readily available. 11 After completing the Scivias, Hildegard continued to compose. In the preface to her Book of Life's Merits she says that, when she began working on that book in 1 1 58, she had already spent eight years writing the Symphonia, the Subtleties, a great many episdes, and several minor works. 12 lt is usually assumed, therefore, that the Symphonia was substantially finished by 11 58, although sorne pieces may have been added later. But its history is not so simple. The Symphonia exists in two manuscripts representing very different versions, which will be described in greater detail below (pp. 51-6o). The earlier was prepared under Hildegard's supervision around 117 5 as a gift for the monks of Villers and contains fifty-seven songs. A revised and enlarged edition, which includes seventy-five songs, was produced at the Rupertsberg scriptorium in the n8os, not long after the composer's death. To complicate matters, twenty-six of the Symphonia pieces also appear, without their music, in a prose miscellany that has hitheno gone unnoticed. Cardinal J.-B. Pitra published this text in bis Analecta sacra (1882.) under the misleading title of "Epilogue to Scwias III.13, pp. 614-15.

10

11"The Text

of the Ordo virtutum," ed. Peter Dronke in Poetic lndividuality in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1970): ISo-92.; trans. Peter Dronke in record liner for Hildegard von Bingen: Ordo virtutum, recorded by Sequentia (Harmonia mundi 2.0395/96); music ed. Audrey Davidson, The "Ordo virtutum .. of Hildegard of Bingen (Kalamazoo, 198s). 12Hildegard of Bingen, Líber vitae meritorum [Book of Life's Merits], Pitra 7-8.

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9

the Life of St. Rupert," because the first three pieces in it are addressed to that saint and it follows his vita in the manuscripts. In a footnote to this compilation, however, Pitra shrewdly characterized it as a "varied and dramatic program of lyrics, songs, and colloquies which the virgins of Bingen, led by Hildegard in ecstatic fervor, were accustomed to perform outside of choir on their titular feast day." 13 Ecstasy aside, this description is a plausible one. We know that the Ordo virtutum was intended for performance by Hildegard's nuns, and after that artistic triumph, she may well have prepared additional if less ambitious "dramatic programs" to enhance the monastic liturgy. 1 suggest that she composed her songs not to fulfill a conceptual scheme but to suit particular occasions, integrating them with suitable homilies, prophecies, and dramatic exchanges. Such liturgical programs could have been recorded by someone at the time, perhaps by Volmar or one of the nuns, and later arranged in a rather haphazard compilation by an editor who wished to assemble Hildegard's "collected works." Another little-known text, her series of homilies on the Gospels, appears to have had a similar genesis. 14 Because the so-called "Epilogue" miscellany has received virtually no attention to date, 1 have offered some further speculations about its construction and dating in an appendix {pp. 68-73 below). To summarize my findings, 1 believe the miscellany indicates at least four new conclusions about the Symphonia. In the first place, it suggests that Hildegard did not initially plan to compose a song cycle any more than she planned to write a trilogy. Her music had its origins in the concrete liturgical life of the Rupertsberg, and only when she had composed a substantial body of lyric-probably in the late 1 1 sos-did she decide to collect all her songs and arrange them in a systematic order. Aher making this decision, she continued to compose new pieces that were incorporated in the cycle only after her death. Secondly, the miscellany may enable us-very tentatively-to UAd Vitam S. Ruperti Epilogus, Pitra 358-68; quotation, p. 358. ••Expositiones quorumdam evangeliorum, Pitra 2.45-32.7.

10

lntroduction

distinguish early, middle, and late periods in Hildegard's oeuvre. By 1 1 51 she had written the fourteen pieces that appear in the Scivias and all or pan of the Ordo virtutum. This earliest layer of composition, including twelve songs in honor of the celestial hierarchy (nos. 2.9-34, 37-40, and 55-56), shares with the Scivias its cryptic and elliptical style. There is no overlap between these fourteen pieces and the twenty-six recorded in the miscellany. Since various segments in the latter suggest a date in the late 11 sos, these twenty-six pieces may define a middle period that ineludes most of the Marian songs and a hymn and sequence to the Holy Spirit. There remain over thirty pieces that appear in one or both of the Symphonia manuscripts. Among these pieces are severallong and masterful compositions honoring local saints (Matthias, Eucharius, Maximin, and Ursula) which can plausibly be assigned to Hildegard's latest period. lt should be stressed, however, that the evidence does not permit conclusive dating of any individual piece. In the third place, the song-texts in the miscellany differ in significant ways from those in the Symphonia. Not only are they embedded in a prose context and copied without notation; they also lack textual cues, such as doxologies and alleluias, which would assign them to particular liturgical genres. lt is possible that, if the miscellany segments were transcribed from actual celebrations, this information was omitted as superfluous to a worshiping community that already knew the music and the appropriate rubrics from performance. On the other hand, it may be that Hildegard formalized the genre designations-and tidied up her textsonly when she had her music copied out for a distant community that would have been unfamiliar with the Rupertsberg's distinctive liturgical style. This possibility leads me to a final speculation. When Hildegard's collected songs were arranged in the final version of the Symphonia, did her editors include all her lyrical compositions, or were sorne of them left out? lt is a peculiar fact that the second Symphonia manuscript (c. n8o-n9o) adds twenty pieces to the first, but omits the short antiphons "O frondens virga" (no. 15) and "Laus Trinitati" (no. 2.6). These two lyrics may have been

Introduction

II

deleted for artistic reasons, as Peter Dronke suggests. 15 But at the time this manuscript was prepared the abbess was no longer alive to delete them, and it may be that their music had simply been lost or forgotten. In fact, it is unlikely that the two Symphonia manuscripts, since they differ widely in structure and content, were copied from the same bound exemplar. (The second could not have been copied from the first, which was already at Villers.) Perhaps the texts-with or without their music-had previously been transcribed only on loose sheets of parchment. If the compiler of the miscellany strung sorne of these sheets together more or less awkwardly, producing an impromptu record of Hildegard as liturgist, the compiler of the second Symphonia manuscript may have sihed through them more judiciously to isolate her songs. In that case, however, a few songlike compositions could have escaped notice, as "O frondens virga" evidently did. This possibility becomes more likely if we assume that the music was not originally written above the text,. but learned orally and performed by the nuns from memory .16 The miscellany, in fact, contains at least four lyrical passages that are thematically and stylistically very close to the Symphonia pieces, although no music for them is extant. 1 propose that these passages represent either "lost" songs or lyrics that Hildegard had originally meant to set to music, but never did. Because of their poetic quality, 1 have chosen to edit them at the end of the Symphonia as "songs without music." The four compositions are "O Verbum Patris," "O Fili dilectissime," "O factura Dei," and "O magna res." Finally, a word on the title is in order. Symphonia and [h]armonia are overlapping terms, and there is no modero English equivalent that has the same range. The word symphonia was used very freely in the Middle Ages and could mean either melody or harmony or simply music in general, whether vocal or instrumental. For late antique theorists such as Cassiodorus and for tSPeter Dronke, "The Composition of Hildegard of Bingen's Symphonia," Sacris Erudiri 19 .(1969-1970): 389. 16 Cf. Leo Treitler, "Oral, Written, and Literate Process in the Transmission of Medieval Music," Speculum 56 (198!): 471-91.

12.

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Isidore of Seville, a symphonia was a consonant interval (fourth, fifth, or octave) as opposed toa dissonant one; the term was la ter applied to organum or early harmonized chant. It could also indicate at least two different instruments: a kind of timbrel or hand drum and, more commonly, the hurdy-gurdy used by minstrelsP In Hildegard's title, however, the most general meaning is probably the one intended. Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum might be rendered as "The Harmonious Music of Heavenly Mysteries." The Symphonia in the Monastic Liturgy There is no doubt that Hildegard intended her music for Mass and the Divine Office at her monastery. Guibert of Gembloux, her friend and secretary after Volmar's death, wrote that after she had enjoyed the sweetness of celestial harmony in her visions, she would "make the same measures-more pleasing than ordinary human music-to be sung publidy in church, with sequences (prosis) composed in praise of God and in honor of the saints. " 18 Some of this liturgical singing even took place beyond the Rupertsberg. Abbot Kuno, once he had forgiven Hildegard for leaving St. Disibod, showed his good will toward her by soliciting revelations about his monks' patron saint: "lf God has shown you anything about our patron, blessed Disibod, 1 ask you to let me know, so that my brethren and 1 may not hesitate to give him fervent praise for it. " 19 In a similar way Heloise had tried to make peace with Abelard after their quarrel by asking him to compose hymns for her nuns. Like Abelard, Hildegard met the request, supplying an antiphon, a responsory, anda sequence (nos. 41, 42, 45). lt also seems likely that the pieces honoring saints Matthias, Eucharius, Maximin, and Boniface (nos. so-54) were written on commission, as all these saints were venerated in the nearby city of Trier, t7Edgar de Bruyne, Etudes d'esthétique médiévale (Bruges, 1946), 1: 3~3-31; Giulio Cattin, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 1, trans. Steven Botterill (Cambridge, 1984): 117, 168-69, 171, 174, 178-79. tBEp. 16, Pitra 385-86. t9Ep. 38 in PL 197: ~o3b.

lntroduction where Hildegard had many connections and where she gave a public sermon in n6o. 20 Sorne of her music may even have been sung at the distant monastery of Villers in Brabant. Around 1 17 s the abbess sent these Cistercians a copy of her Book of Life's Merits as a gift, and she attached the oldest text of the Symphonia complete with neumes. 2t Monastic worship is ordered around the Divine Office, which consists of seven daily "hours, or services of common prayer plus the night service of matins. The basic structure of these services is set forth in chapters eight through eighteen of the Benedictine Rule. Each hour consists in varying proportions of psalmody, lessons from Scripture, and assorted texts of prayer and praise set to music-canticles, antiphons, responsories, and hymns. 22 The three Gospel canticles are fixed texts, but the other items vary with each day and hour and constitute a vast corpus of medieval chant. The genre most fully represented in the Symphonia, as in the chant repertoire generally, is the antiphon. Forty-three of Hildegard's compositions, well over half, belong to this category, which is related to the practice of psalmody. In standard medieval usage an antiphon, or freely composed text with melody, would be sung before and after each psalm in the Office. Because the Office was designed by Saint Benedict so as to cover the full cyde of 1 50 psalms every week, this style of psalmody required an enormous number of antiphons. Matins in the monastic usage includes as many as twelve psalms, each with its antiphon. Vespers has up to five, as does the early morning office of lauds; and each of the lesser hours has three. As the antiphon is liturgically subordinare to the psalm, it is usually a brief, unpretentious composition suited to the scriptural theme or the feast of the day. lt takes its name from the practice of antiphonal singing: psalm verses would be chanted alternately by two zooronke, "Composition" 390. 21Letter from the monks of Villers, Ep. 10, Pitra 394· 22for the discussion of liturgical genres 1am indebted to Willi Apel, Gregorian Chant (Bloomington, 1958): 13-13; Richard Hoppin, Medieval Music (New York, 1978): chap. 4; and Andrew Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office (Toronto, I9h): 16-43. so-So.

Introduction half-choirs, while the antiphon was sung by the full choir to a simple tune related to the reciting tone. (In more elaborate performance, it might be sung between verses as well as before and after the psalm.) In Hildegard's cycle, the simple psalm antiphon is best represented by a series for matins on the feast of Saint Ursula (no. 63). Other examples are "Karitas habundat" (no. z.s), "O mirum admirandum" (no. 41), and a group of short antiphons for the Virgin (nos. II-IS). Not all antiphons were tied to psalmody, however. lt became customary to insert somewhat longer, more elaborate antiphons after the Gospel canticles that concluded the major hours, especially the Magníficat at vespers and the Benedictus at lauds. The Marian devotion of the Middle Ages expressed itself richly in these longer antiphons, a few of which are still in use (such as the "Salve regina" and "Alma Redemptoris Mater"). Hildegard's most complex antiphon to the Virgin, "O tu illustrata" (no. 2.3), belongs to this category of "free" or votive antiphons. Still others, such as "O gloriosissimi lux vivens angeli" (no. 2.9) and "O spectabiles viri" (no. 3 1), although not addressed to Mary, are also independent devotional pieces. Of Hildegard's fony-three antiphons, fourteen appear to be votive antiphons, for in the manuscripts they lack the differentia oc cadence that would connect them with a psalm tone. The second most frequent item is the responsory, represented by eighteen pieces and intended primarily for matins. This service, in the most solemn monastic usage, consists of three sections called nocturns, each nocturn including a group of psalms or canticles with their antiphons followed by four lessons from Scripture. After each lesson is sung a responsory-a freely composed, musically complex piece that alternates solo verses with choral response. Unlike antiphons, responsories tend to give several notes and sometimes highly embellished melodic phrases to each syllable so that the trained soloists and choirs can display their skill. The textual form is also complex and allows for many structural variants. One very common form can be illustrated by Hildegard's solemn responsory, "Rex noster promptus" (no. 59). In the diagram below, R represents the respond, composed of

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I

s

three sections or periods (a, b, and e); its final period, Re, is called the repetenda or refrain. V signifies the verse, and D is the short form of the doxology ("Glory be to the Father"). V and D are sung to the same melody. choir R. with solo intonation to•

Rex noster• promptus est suscipere sanguinem innocentum.

choir Rb

Unde angeli concinunt et in laudibus sonant.

choir

R.:

solo V

choir

R.:

Sed nubes super eundem sanguinem plangunt. Tirannus autem in gravi somno mortis propter maliciam suam suffocatus est. Sed nubes super eundem sanguinem plangunt.

solo D

Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui sancto.

choir Re

Sed nubes super eundem sanguinem plangunt.

Thus the overall form is R.bc-V-Rc-D-Rc, a form that characterizes the last responsory in each noctum. In simpler forms the doxology may be omitted, giving the pattern R.bc-V-Rc, as in "O quam preciosa" (no. 2.2.) and "O vos angeli" (no. 30). ln addition to antiphons and responsories, the Symphonia ineludes fourteen longer pieces that are artistically among Hildegard's most accomplished. According to the manuscripts, four of these pieces are hymns (nos. 17, 2.7, so, and 65), although in its musical form "Mathias sanctus" (no. so) is actually a sequence. Medieval hymns and sequences were normally two distinct genres. Hymn$, which grew out of early Christian congregational singing, were sung at various points in the Office but never at Mass. A typical twelhh-century hymn was a song in which each stanza followed the same metrical pattern and rhyme scheme and

x6

Introduction

was sung to the same relatively simple tune. Sequences developed in the Carolingian period and underwent a complex musical and poetic evolution. 23 Composed by the thousands, they were to be sung between the Alleluia and the Gospel at Mass. Classical sequences, like those of Notker, are composed of paired versicles rather than stanzas. Following the principie of strophic responsion, the two versicles in each pair have the same number of syllables and are sung to the same tune, but the melody and the textual form change from pair to pair. The Easter sequence "Victimae paschali" is a well-known example. By the twelfth century, however, most new sequences were being composed in stanzaic form and followed a set meter and rhyme scheme, even though their music retained the older strophic responsion. Hildegard, a maverick, preferred the archaic nonmetrical sequence, but exceeded the Carolingian composers in irregularity. In fact, her forms are so free that it is often hard to tell a sequence from a hymn. The Symphonia rubrics identify seven pieces as sequences: nos. 2.0, 2.8, 45, 49, 53, 54, and 64. But if we add "Mathias sanctus" (no. so) to the list, on musical grounds we would have to delete "O Ecclesia" (no. 64), as it shows no sigo of strophic responsion. In these two exceptional cases, the musical form may have been at odds with the liturgical use. "O Ierusalem" (no. 49) begins stanzaically like a hymn, continues with paired strophes like a sequence, and ends in totally free form.24 Three other pieces-"0 viridissima virga" (no. 19), "O dulcissime amator" (no. 57), and "O Patee omnium" (no. s8)follow neither the hymn nor the sequence form but are through2lQn origins of the form see Richard Crocker, "The Troping Hypothesis," Musical Quarterly s:z. (1966): 183-2.03; Peter Dronke, "The Beginnings of the Sequence" (196s), rpt. in The Medieval Poet and His World (Rome, 1984): 1 I sH; Stephen Ryle, "The Sequence-Reflections on Literature and Liturgy," in Francis Caims, ed., Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 1976 (Liverpool, 1977): 171-82.. Richard Crocker offers more sustained treatment in "The Se· quence," in Wulf Arlt, Ernst Lichtenhahn, and Hans Oesch, eds., Gattungen der Musik in Einuldarstellungen (Bern, 1973), 1: 2.69-32.2., and The Early Medieval Sequence (Berkeley, 1977). 24Ludwig Bronarski, Die Lieder der heiligen Hildegard (Leipzig, 192.2.): 3136.

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17

composed, that is, without melodic repetition. Numbers 57 and 58 are designated in the manuscripts as "Symphonia virginum" and "Symphonia viduarum"-love songs to Christ meant to be sung respectively by virgins and widows, the two types of women in the nunnery. Hildegard may have composed these songs as independent devotional pieces, not connected directly with the Mass or Office. Finally, the Symphonia indudes two short pieces for Mass: a setting of the Kyrie and the alleluia-verse "O virga mediatrix" (no. r 8), to be sung in place of a sequence befo re the Gospel. The cyde thus includes a total of seventy-seven pieces. All are reproduced here except for the Kyrie, which of course has no independent text. Under no. 63, however, 1 have grouped together the eight short antiphons for matins of Saint Ursula, because textually they make up a single narrative. This grouping explains the discrepancy between the seventy-seven pieces listed in the older edition and the sixty-nine numbered in this volume. Aesthetics and Theology of Music

In her memoirs Hildegard recalled, with her characteristic blend of diffidence, pride, and wonder, how she began to compase: "untaught by anyone, l composed and chanted plainsong in praise of God and the saints, although 1 had never studied either musical notation or any kind of singing. " 25 Contemporaries who knew her music were taken with its beauty and its strangeness. Dieter of Echternach, one of her hagiographers, marveled at the "chant of surpassingly sweet melody" that she created "with amazing harmony" (mirabili symphonia). 26 And Volmar delighted in her vox inaudite melodie-strange and unheard-of music, with a gesture toward those unheard melodies which Keats would daim are sweetest. 27 Hildegard could say of her musical gih, as she said of the Scivias, that she acquired it "not through human 2.SVita S. Hildegardis in PL 197: 104a; Dronke, Women Writers 1.31.. 1..14 in PL 197: 101b. 27Ep. 8, Pitra 346. 16 Vita

r8

lntroduction

lips, nor through human intelligence and ingenuity, nor through a desire for human composition," but through God alone. 28 Because of such direct claims to divine inspiration, the Symphonia is to medieval hymnography what "Kubla Khan" is to Romantic poetry. Whatever conscious artistry has done or left undone, the inspiration is avowed as Other. Both Volmar and Dieter, as well as Hildegard herself, mentioned her music in connection with another project, the Lingua ignota or "Unknown Language," which also engaged her during the II50s. 29 This exceptional work, a glossary of sorne nine hun-: dred invented names for earthly and celestial beings, has its own "unknown alphabet" of twenty-three characters. lt includes both a liturgical vocabulary and terms for every aspect of daily life in the monastery, such as the names of all objects in the wardrobe, the herb garden, and the scriptorium. The Lingua ignota might have been a kind of secret language for the initiated, used to create an atmosphere of mystical intensity in the convent. The fact that Hildegard and her associates spoke of it in the same breath with her music suggests that these works served a common function. Both were revealed from heaven and had arcane significance, and both could be shared by the privileged congregation that was striving to imitate the life of heaven on earth. A few words from the Lingua appear in Hildegard's antiphon "O orzchis Ecclesia" (no. 68), and in one manuscript the letters of the unknown alphabet are written on musical staves along with her Kyrie and "O virga mediatrix" (no. r8). 30 Hildegard understood music in what would now be called a mystical context, although in the twelfth century hers was a widely shared understanding. When she wrote, in a celebrated apología for music, that the very soul is symphonic (symphonialis est anima), 31 she was appealing to an insight as old as Pythagoras, transmitted to the medieval world through Boethius's treatise On lBScivias, Protestificatio, p. 3. l 9 Liber vitae meritorum, preface, Pitra 7; letter to Pope Anastasius IV, Ep. :z. in PL 197: 1 s:z.d. 30Vienna, Nationalbibliothek Cod. 1016, fols. usv-II9' (13th c.). llEp. 47 in PL 197: :z.:z.1c.

Introduction

19

Music. According to Boethius, the Pythagoreans had taught that "the whole structure of soul and body is united by musical harmony."32 Boethius added that there are three kinds of music: musica mundana, or music of the spheres, which is produced by the motion of celestial bodies and serves to order the elements and the four seasons; musica humana, which binds the rational to the irrational part of the soul and both to the body; and finally musíca instrumentalis, which is made by human beings. Because the human microcosm is so subtly and sensitively tuned to the cosmos, art-music cannot fail to affect it. Thus the ancient world held the emotional power of music to be a moral and spiritual power that could be used either for good or for ill. If music could heal, soothe, and inspire, it could also arouse the soul to erotic frenzy or savagery. To make dangerous music was immoral; conversely, to be immoral was to be unmusical. In the words of Cassiodorus, another schoolmaster to the Middle Ages, "if we perform the commandments of the Creator and with pure minds obey the rules he has laid down, every word we speak, every pulsation of our veins, is related by musical rhythms to the powers of harmony. . . . If we live virtuously, we are constantly proved to be under its discipline, but when we commit injustice we are without music." 33 For Hildegard, following a similar logic, the ultimate unmusical spirit was the devil. In one of her most powerful myths she tells how Satan was moved to despair by the voice of Adam singing in paradise, because it reminded him of the sweet songs of heaven; so in his envious cunning he has never ceased "to disturb or destroy the affirmation and beauty and sweetness of divine praise and spiritual hymns." 34 In the Ordo virtutum only the devil has a speaking (or more precisely a shouting) part. The soul and all the Virtues sing. A distinctly "romantic" ·strain in Hildegard's aesthetics is revealed by her strong interest in the expressive rather than the 32Boethius, De institutione musica 1.1, ed. Gottfried Friedlein (Leipzig, 1867); trans. Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History (New York, 1950): 83. JJCassiodorus, Jnstitutiones 5.2., ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1937); trans Strunk, Source Readings 88. J4Ep. 47 in PL 197: uod-ua, as emended in Dronke, Women Writers 315.

2.0

Introduction

formal qualities of music. Most academic writers on the art, following Boethius, treated it as a branch of applied mathematics and despised mere singers. 35 Hildegard's view, on the other hand, is closer to a Neoplatonist tradition that can be traced back to Pseudo-Dionysius and Erigena, and may have reached her through the Carolingian theorist Regino of Prüm. Regino and his followers assimilated the musica humana with singing and drew their essential distinction between "artificial" and "natural" music. Artificial music "is contrived by human skill and ingenuity, and exists in certain instruments," whereas natural music "is made by no instruments nor by the touch of fingers, nor by any touch or instigation of man: it is modulated by nature alone under divine inspiration" and exists in the heavens and the human voice.3 6 Thus vocal music is both natural and inspired, and Regino explicitly identifies it with chant composed in the eight liturgical modes. There is an obvious resemblance between bis conception of plainsong and the language Hildegard .used to describe her inspiration. To the classical musica mundana and musica humana, Christian theorists added the notion of musica celestis: the singing of the angels in heaven. 37 lt was a monastic commonplace that "the office of singing pleases God if it is performed with an attentive mind, when in this way we imitate the choirs of angels who are said to sing the Lord's praise without ceasing."38 Music was both duty and joy, the continua! and sometimes arduous discipline of a monastic community, but also the sigo of its angelic and supraJSThis medieval approach is strangely echoed in the work of Pozzi Escot, a contemporary composer and thcorist who treats Hildegard's music in purely mathematical terms. See "The Gothic Cathedral and Hidden Gcometry of St. Hildegard," Sonus S (1984): 14-31· J6Regino of Prüm, Epístola d~ harmonica institution~. ed. Manin Gerben, Scriptor~s ~cclesiastici d~ musica (1784; rpt. Milan, 1931), 1: 131, 136; Calvin Bower, "Natural and Artificial Music: The Origins and Development of an Aesthetic Concept," Musica Disciplina 15 (1971): 17-33; Nino Pirrotta, "'Musica de sono humano' and the Musical Poetics of Guido of Arezzo," Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s. 7 (1976): 13-17. J7de Bruyne, Etudes 1: 11o-11. lBAureJian of RéOme, De musica disciplina 1, ed. Lawrence Gushee, Corpus scriptorum de musica 11 (Nijmegen, 1975): S9·

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2.1

mundane life. Hildegard liked to contrast human beings, who were composed of soul and body so asto express God's image in both praise and work, with the angels, who were pure spirit and therefore pure song. 39 lt is the privilege of the blessed, here and hereafter, to sing harmony with them: In te symphonizat Spiritus sanctus, quia angelicis choris associaris et quoniam in Filio Dei ornaris. (no. 49. s)

In you the Holy Spirit makes symphony, for you are joined to the angelic choirs and adorned in the Son of God.

Thus Hildegard honors her patron, Saint Rupert. And of the Virgin she sings: Venter enim tuus gaudium habuit cum omnis celestis symphonia de te sonuit, quía virgo Filium Dei portasti. (no. 17, 5)

For your womb held joy when all the harmony of heaven resounded from you; for as a virgin, you bore the Son of God.

Because it is Christ whom the angels praise, wherever he is music must also be. Christ himself, in certain ancient writings, is portrayed as musícían, minstrel, lord of the dance. In the second century the apologist Clement of Alexandria, desiring to convert the Pythagoreans, set himself up as mystagogue to elaborate on this theme. Orpheus, he allowed, could move stones and wolves with his music, but Christ, the New Song, had done more: he has turned stony minds and wolvish hearts into men. lt is he who created the cosmos and the microcosm and "makes melody to God on this instrument of many tones.... A beautiful, breathing instrument of music the Lord made man, aher His own image. He Himself, ... the supramundane Wisdom, the celestial Word, is the allharmonious, melodious, holy instrument of God." What is more, l 9 De operatione Dei 3.10.14, PL 197: 1016bc; Prooemíum Vitae S. Disibodi, Pitra 351.

2.2

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his worship provides a pleasing alternative to pagan initiatory rites. On the mountain of God "there revel [not the Maenads] ... but the daughters of God, the fair lambs, who celebrate the holy rites of the Word, raising a sober choral dance. The righteous are the chorus; 'the music is a hymn of the King of the universe. The maidens strike the lyre, the angels praise, the prophets speak; the sound of music issues forth, they run and pursue the jubilant band." 40 Here is a programmatic description of the Symphonia one thousand years avant la lettre. Hildegard even echoes the theme of Christian versus pagan when, in the sequence to Saint Rupert, she contrasts the symphonies of the Holy Spirit with an antithetic pagan rite, "the dance of the ancient cave." Again, in a song to the virgin martyr Ursula, she pits the powerful music (magna symphonia) sung in mockery by the persecutors against the supreme harmony of the celestial choirs. The theology of music included, at least in theory, instrumental as well as vocal performance. Both psalm commentaries and their illustrations seem to afford evidence for instrumental praise, and in many manuscripts-including one from an illuminated Scivias produced at the Rupertsberg-angels or saints are shown playing instruments. 41 But this music, like everything else in the Middle Ages, had a "spiritual sense" that could overwhelm the literal. lt has been convincingly argued that the evidence of manuscript paintings must be referred to medieval ideas about ancient Hebrew worship, not to contemporary practice; for although the psalter commends musical instruments, medieval churchmen disliked them and tried to explain the biblical references away. 42 Augustine and the Carolingians sanctioned a tradition of alle40CJement of Alexandria, Protreptikos 1 and 1 2., in Ante-Nicene Fathers (New York, 188o-1899), 2.: 172., 2.05. 41Illustration to Scivias 11.3 from Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Hs. 1 (now lost); reproduced in Scivias, vol. 43, facing p. 134. Cf. Reinhold Hammerstein, Die Musik der Engel: Untersuchungen zur Musikanschauung des Mittelaliers (Bern, 1 9 6 2.). 42Edmund Bowles, "Were Musical Instruments Used in the Liturgical Service during the Middle Ages?" Galpin Society ]ournal 10 (1957): 40-56; james McKinnon, "Musical Instruments in Medieval Psalm Commentaries and Psalters," ]ourna/ of the American Musicological Society 2.1 (1968):3-2.0.

Introduction gorizing the various instruments mentioned in the psalms, particularly Psalm 1 so. The tambourine, for example, stands for asceticism, because the skin stretched over the wood must be taut and dry, like the body purified by fasting and continence. 43 The organ represents the communion of saints united in charity, as its sev:eral pitches are harmonized in the diapason. 44 The trumpet recalls the voice of the prophets, and among strínged ínstruments, psaltery and lyre (cithara) symbolize heaven and earth, because the one is plucked from above and the other from below. The psaltery also has ten stríngs to remind us of the Ten Commandments. 45 Following thís tradition, Hildegard writes that, in the ensemble of Psalm 1 so, "outer realitíes teach us about ínner ones-namely how, in accordance with the material composition and quality of ínstruments, we can best transform and shape the performance of our inner being towards praises of the Creator." 46 She also mentions instrumental music in several other places, for instance in her hymn to the Holy Spirit, who plays "upon the timbrel and the lyre" (no. 27, 1). This spiritual understanding of music reached its height in Hildegard's own writings and those of her contemporary Wolbero, Benedictine abbot of St. Pantaleimon in Cologne (1 147-1 167). In a commentary on the Song of Songs, written for the edification of nuns, Wolbero interpreted the entire mysticallove song with the aid of musical analogies. 47 For him every preacher and exegete is a cantor who sings to calm the impassioned (like Saul) or to arouse the sluggish (like Elisha). The Song of Songs is a spiritualis harmonia in four parts, or a canticle to the Lord "modulated" in the seven tones by the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Virgins sing the new song of the heavenly bridegroom, widows the song of gladness, and married folk the song of praise. The three estates 4J Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 1 so. 7, in Corpus Christianorum: series latina (Tournai, 1953- ; hereafter CCSL), 40: 2195. 44 0tloh of St. Emmeran, Dialogus de tribus quaestionibus 4S, PL 146: use. 4SThéodore Gérold, Les nres de l'église et la musique (Paris, 1931): 116-30. 46Ep. 47 in PL 197: 2.19d-1oa; Dronke, Women Writers 197-98. 47Wolbero, Commentaria in Canticum canticorum, PL 195: 1oos-12.78; David Cha~berlain, "Wolbero of Cologne (d. 1 167): A Zenith of Musicallmagery," Mediaeval Studies 33 (1971): II4-16.

lntroduction of virginity, widowhood, and marriage are like workshops wherein the instruments of praise are fashioned. Wolbero's extensive musical imagery shows how intimately this art could be bound up with spiritual realities, as one would expect among monks and nuns wbo devoted tbeir lives to choral praise. Hildegard may well have known Wolbero personally, as she bad several correspondents in Cologne and preacbed in that city during bis abbacy. In any case, bis commentary sbows that contemporary Benedictines shared Hildegard's passion for music, if not all of ber ideas about it. Hildegard's dedication to her art was put to the test in ~e last year of ber life when, at the age of eighty, sbe found berself and all her sisters laid under interdict, tbe ultimate ecclesiastical sanction.48 The issue was apparendy trivial: she had buried a nobleman, formerly excommunicate, in her monastic churchyard, and the prelates of Mainz demanded that his corpse be exhumed as unwortby of Christian burial. The abbess and ber daughters maintained that tbey were in the right-that the deceased had in fact been reconciled to the Cburch-and it is likely that some political grudge lay behind the sanction. Be that as it may, the nuns held out for several months before the interdict was lihed. In the meantime they could not hear Mass, receive the sacraments, or chant the monastic Office, which they were simply to recite. This penalty deprived the abbess of music for the first time since her childhood, and during the long silence of the choir she reflected on the meaning of music, its charismatic nature, and its place in the divine scbeme of things. The result was an extraordinary appeal to the prelates of Mainz in wbicb she not only protested tbe interdict but also expounded her theology of music, concluding with a propbetic warning to its enemies. Not for ber tbe doctrine tbat, when actual music is silent, its spiritual essence will suffice. Instead she warns tbe prelates to "beware, before you use an interdict to stop tbe mouth of any cburch of God's singers ... lest you be ensnared in your 4BAdelgundis Führkotter, Hildegard von Bingen (Salzburg, 1971): 45-47; Dronke, Women Writers 196-97.

Introduction

25

judgments by Satan, who lured man away from the celestial harmony and the delights of paradise." lf the erring derics do not repent, "they will forego the fellowship of angelic praise in heaven, for they have unjustly despoiled God on earth of the beauty of his praise." 49 To silence music in the Church is to create an artificial rift between earth and heaven, to put asunder that which God has joined together. The abbess made her most original contribution to the theology of music in reflecting on the fall of Adam. In her view, the first human beings enjoyed extraordinary graces-omniscience, prophecy, converse with angels, direct vision of God-and Adam, among his other perfections, possessed a voice that rang with "the sound of every harmony and the sweetness of the whole art of music. And if he had remained in the condition in which he was formed, human frailty could never endure the power and the resonance of that voice." 50 Thus music, for Hildegard, was not the province of a gifted elite, but a thing quintessentially human; mankind was never meant to live without it. So to compensa te for the voice that Adam lost, "the holy prophets . . . invented various musical instruments," and others carne after and imitated them. For Hildegard, not only inspired canticles but all music was associated with prophecy and the nostalgia for Eden. That is why, she says, "a person often sighs and moans upon hearing sorne melody, recalling the nature of the celestial harmony." And that is why David, the inspired psalmist, commanded us to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. For music could not only express the prophetic spirit; it might even awaken that spirit. Regino of Prüm had recalled the story of Elisha: the man of God once recognized that the spirit of prophecy was not in him, so he called for a minstrel and, as soon as he heard the music, "the Spirit suddenly descended upon him and he prophesied" (2. Kings 3:15). 51 The relationship of music and text is of particular interest in the Symphonia, although this whole subject is fraught with problems. lt is important to recall that poetry, in the medieval curriculum, 47 in PL 197: uxa-c; Dronke, Women Writers 315· 50Ep. 47 in PL 197: 12.ocd; Dronke, Women Writers 198. si Regino of Prüm, Epistola, ed. Gerbert, 1: 13 6.

49 Ep.

Introduction was nota discipline unto itself. Literary criticism was considered an aspect of gramrnar and figures of speech a part of rhetoric, while versification carne under the art of music. Thus, according to Isidore of Seville, music theory has three parts of which only one, harmonics, deals with musical pitch and melody. The other two concern verbal music: rhythmics, or syllabic versification, and metrics, or classical prosody. 52 Guido of Arezzo, an eleventhcentury theorist, drew analogies between metrical verse and the composition of chant. In poetry, one or more speech sounds make up a syllable, two or three syllables a foot, and a set number of feet compose a metrical line. So also in music: one or two syllables are sung to a neuma or cluster of related notes, and one or more neumata make up a distinctio or musical phrase. 5 3 A little later, john (of Afflighem?) made a similar comparison between the phrasing of plainsong and the syntactic units in liturgical prose. 54 Such analogies suggest that the relationship of words and music was conceived in primarily formal terms: both embody the armonia or strucrural pattem in closely related media. Words need not be set to music that will express their meaning or even their emotional quality; rather, words and music together are "set" to a third thing, a formal idea, which in tum expresses the harrnony of the cosrnos.ss This principie, so unfamiliar to modero listeners, helps to explain sorne seerning anornalies in Hildegard's music and in the chant repertoire generally. For instance, the placing of musical stress through ·melismas (long melodic phrases sung to one syllable) is not firmly correlated with either the natural speech accent of a word or its importance in the text. 56 Examples in Hildegard's S2Jsidore of Seville, Etymologiae 3.I8, PL 81: 164b. SlGuido of Arezzo, Micrologus de disciplina artis musicae, ed. joseph Smits van Waesberghe, Corpus scriptorum de musica 4 (Nijmegen, 1955): 162.-77; Pirrotta, "'Musica de sono humano'" 17-2.1. S4 See Marianne Richert Pfau, "Music and Text in Hildegard's Antiphons," p. 8:z. below. SSjohn Stevens, Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, IOJO-IJJO (Cambridge, 1986): 499· Chapters 8 and I I are very helpful on the problem of words, meaning, and expression in chant. S6Apel, Gregorian Chant 2.79-89.

Introduction repertoire include melismas on the unstressed syllables in antiqui (ancient, no. 31), sensuum (senses, no. 33), and castissime (very chaste, no. 3 5). Rhymes and other figures of speech are seldom accentuated by the melodic line. This lack of correlation does not imply that music and text are independent. On the contrary, the two sonorities can work in a kind of counterpoint, unpredictable and rich, as delineated below in the essay of Marianne Richert Pfau. For Hildegard, the duality of word and song was itself patient of theological interpretation. Unlike many patristic and Cistercian writers, she was untroubled by the sensual beauty of music and its potential for distracting worshipers from the text. Augustine had once tried, in the anguished self-searching of bis Confessions, to analyze his response to psalmody, distinguishing between the wholesome text and the dangerously seductive melody.57 But, unable to separate the profits of the one from the perils of the other, he had to give up the effort as fruidess. Hildegard never made the attempt. For her, liturgical song was a medium that perfecdy united soul and body, rational praise and spiritual melody, justas Christ had united the human nature with the divine. "Thus the word designates the body, but music manifests the spirit. For the harmony of heaven proclaims the divinity of God's Son, and the word makes known his humanity.".s& Musical Style and Performance

Hildegard's creations, compared with a contemporary hymn by Abelard ora sequence by Adam of St. Víctor, will sound either primitive or unnervingly avant-garde. In a sense they are both. As a Benedictine, she was acquainted with a large repertoire of chant, but she lacked formal training and made no attempt to imitate the mainstream poetic and musical achievements of her day. Various scholars have hypothesized that she was influenced by German folksong, yet her compositions lack the two essential traits of a S7Augustine, Confessiones I0.3J, CCSL 2.7: 181-82.. SBScivias III.I3.12., p. 631.

2.8

lntroduction

popular tune: it must be easy to remember and easy to sing. The difficult music of the Symphonia is sui generis. In M.-1. Ritscher's words, it is "gregorianizing but not Gregorian" and impossible to classify in terms of any known contemporary movement. 59 One useful way of discussing the style of plainsong is to locate items on a spectrum ranging from simple syllabic pieces, in which each syllable is sung to a single note, to ornate melismatic chant, in which one syllable may be embroidered with a figure of several notes or even several phrases. In general, the more melismatic a piece, the more solemn, elabora te, and difficult it is, and the more the text is dominated by the music. Hildegard's sequences and hymns fall into the intermediate range sometimes called neumatic, in which there are seldom more than two or three notes to a syllable. Her antiphons and responsories, however, can be melismatic in the extreme, with the longest melismas falling at the beginning and end of songs as a kind of musical punctuation. The style can be florid, almost rococo, and demands a skillful and well-trained choir. In her most outstanding example, "O vos angeli" (no. 30), Hildegard achieves an average ratio of more than six notes per syllable, and in the final word of the respond there is a melisma of sorne eighty notes. 6° Another eccentric feature of Hildegard's style is the wide vocal range she employs. Many songs have an ambitus of two octaves and sorne even of two and a half, placing a considerable strain on the voice of the average singer. The composer liked to use the extreme upper and lower ranges of the voice for emphasis, and a few of her flights are unmistakably meant as tone-painting, as in the rising, hovering, and then sharply plummeting figure on qui volare voluit ("who wished to fly") in "O gloriosissimi lux vivens angeli" (no. 2.9). 61 Satan's ascent and fall could not be more forcefully represented. But this device is not consistently used; S9M.-J. Ritscher, "Zur Musik der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen," in Hildegard von Bingen, II79-1979, ed. Anton Brück (Mainz, 1979): 2.oo-2.ox. 60joseph Schmidt-Górg, "Die Sequenzen der heiligen Hildegard," in Studien zur Musikgeschichte des Rheinlandes: Festschrift Ludwig Schiedermair, ed. Willi Kahl, Heinrich Lemacher, and Joseph Schmidt-Gorg (Cologne, 1956): 115. 6tBronarski, Lieder 102..

lntroduction

29

more ohen than not, such figures have a purely ornamental porpose. Also notable are the wide melodic leaps, especially the frequent ascending and descending fihhs. Hildegard had a way of scurrying rapidly up and down the octave, like an angel on jacob's ladder, several times in the space of a word. Ludwig Bronarski has characterized her melodic lines as angular and "gothic"-full of the sharply pointed arches that, in the architectural realm, still lay several decades into the future. 6 2 The eight church modes or scales, as Hildegard used them, tend to collapse into three different tonalities, on d, e, and c. One tonality resembles our major and another our minor scale, the third being the medieval Phrygian mode. 63 In each mode, however, Hildegard drew on a relatively small number of motifs which she repeated, with ingenious variation, in every piece composed in that mode. This quality of repetition restores sorne of the musical stability she sacrificed in abandoning strophic construction. But even in her more or less regular hymns and sequences, the repeated melodies are never exactly the same because the text itself is not regular. So to accommodate the uneven numbers of syllables, small melodic motifs are continually interpolated and omitted. As a result, nothing is ever musically predictable. This extreme liberty of construction is the counterweight to Hildegard's motivic style of composition. There is no answer to the usual vexed question of whether the Symphonia was performed "rhythmically." As few chant notations supply note values, singers must use their discretion. Nor is there evidence that the songs were accompanied with instruments, although performers are free to experiment, and several fine recordings make use of them. Despite our maddening ignorance about medieval performance practice, it is nonetheless tempting to imagine how the Symphonia sounded in situ at the Rupertsberg. Literary evidence can provide a few tantalizing clues, if not hard facts, about Hildegard's own taste and practice. In her sequence to Saint Disibod (no. 4 5), there is an interesting 628ronarski, Lieder xo8. 6lJ thank William Mahrt ol Stanford University loe this observation.

Introduction

30

reference to antiphonal singing. Among other praises of the saint, the abbess exclaims: O Disibode, in tuo lumine per exempla puri soni membra mirifice laudis edificasti in duabus partibus per Filium hominis.

O Disibod, in your light, with exemplars of pure sound, you built up a body of wondrous praise in two parts through the Son of man.

These two parts suggest the division of the monastic choir, both musically and architecturally, for antiphonal chant. 64 The saint through his music is building the body of Christ, who in a different sense has "two parts" because he is both divine and human. Although the "exemplars" could be mere songbooks, antiphonaries, the context indicates something more mystical and Platonic. 1 believe that Hildegard was projecting her own experience of inspired music onto the saint, imagining the musical light and luminous sound of her visions as the exemplar of liturgical song in the Church. Given her visionary conception of music, it is hard to believe that the rhapsodic quality of her lyrics did not call forth a similarly rapt, uninhibited performance style. The vocal timbre that Hildegard praises is always the sweet, clear, ringing tone (dulcissima, clara, sonans). Mary is said figuratively to deliver fallen man by crying out "with a clear voice" (no. 14), and with the same kind of voice Saint Eucharius intercedes for his people (no. 53) and Saint Ursula and her companions greet martyrdom (no. 6 5). Hildegard would probably ha ve agreed with Isidore of Seville that "the perfect voice is high, sweet, and loud (clara): high, to be adequate to the sublime; loud, to fill the ear; sweet, to soothe the minds of the hearers." 65 The abbess compared her own voice 64Pudentiana Barth, M.-1. Ritscher, and joseph Schmidt-Gorg, eds., Hildegard von Bingen: Lieder (Salzburg, 1969): 2.47. 6Sfsidore of Seville, Etymologiae J.2.0.I4, PL 82.: x66a; trans. Strunk, Source Readings 96.

Introduction

31

(allegorically) to that of a trumpet resounding by the breath of God. 66 And when Adam sang with the angels, she wrote, he had "a resonant voice like the sound of a monochord. "6 7 This choice of instruments is striking, for the monochord (already known to Pythagoras and Euclid} was a simple, one-stringed instrument used, throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, for teaching the elementary laws of harmonics and singing. By Hildegard's day, however, it had cometo be used as a solo instrument, with additional strings and hence a greater sonority. 68 So this passage may refer either to the power or, more likely, to the natural harmony in Adam's voice. It also indicates that the Rupertsberg may have possessed a monochord on which Hildegard could pick out her melodies in order to teach them. Regino of Prüm had written that although natural music or song is superior to artificial music, the former can only be appreciated by means of the latter. 69 In a second text on Adam, Hildegard says that the wise men who invented the various kinds of organum (early harmonized chant) "adapted their singing to the bending of the finger-joints, as it were recalling that Adam was formed by the finger of God, which is the Holy Spirit. " 70 This bit of allegory alludes to the Guidonian hand, another pedagogic device of medieval choir directors. Prometed by Guido of Arezzo in the cleventh century, the Guidonian hand enabled a cantor to lead his or her choir in unfamiliar music by pointing to the finger-joints on the left hand, which were correlated with the notes of the scale.71 This is another method Hildegard might have used to teach new pieces to her nuns. References to organum, here and perhaps also in a sequence to the Virgin (no. 2.0, 4b), indicate that the abbess was at least 66Letter to Elisabeth of SchOnau, Ep. 45 in PL 197: 117d. 67Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae, ed. Paul Kaiser (Leipzig, 1903): 148. 68David Munrow, lnstruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (London, 1976): 17-18. 69Regino of Prüm, Epístola, ed. Gerbert, 1: 136. 7DEp. 47 in PL 197: uoc; Dronke, Women Writers 198. 71The device is illustrated in Gustave Reese, Music in the Middle Ages (New York, 1940): 151.

32·

lntroduction

acquainted with this type of harmony. In a letter of 1153/54 to Pope Anastasius, she described her musical inspiration in these words: "He who is great without failing has now touched a little dwelling-place [i.e., herself] ... so that it resounds with melody in many tones, yet concordant with itself" (multimodam, sed sibi consonantem, melodiam sonaret). 72 This wording recalls Augustine's definition of harmony as a "sweet concord of different but not mutually clashing sounds" (diversis quidem sed non inter se adversis sonis). 73 If Hildegard's phrase is not purely formulaic, it might indicate harmonized rather than monodic chanting, although one cannot make direct inferences from what Hildegard heard in her visions to what her nuns performed in their choir. Multimodam could also mean various or wide-ranging or simply "composed in many modes." Listeners may wish to compare the a capella, unison recording by the nuns of St. Hildegard's Abbey with the more variegated performances by Gothic Voices and Sequentia, which employ instruments and a vocal drone. Poetic Style

Hildegard's poetic world is like the Sibyl's cave: difficult of access, reverberating with cryptic echoes. The oracle's message, once interpreted, may or may not hold surprises. But the suppliant emerges with a sense of initiation, and the voice itself is unforgettable. No formal poetry written in the twelfth century, and none that Hildegard might have known, is very much like hers. For models one must look, rather, to the rich corpus of liturgical prayer. It is not surprising that, until the advent of modern vers libre, scholars were reluctant evento dignify Hildegard's songs with the title of poetry. 74 In style they are much closer to Kunstprosa, a highly 7Zl.etter to Pope Anastasius IV, Ep. 2. in PL 197: 152.d. 7 3Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 150.6, CCSL 40: 2.196. 74G. M. Dreves calls them "mere sketches, the rough drafts of hymns and sequences"; see Analecta hymnica medii aevi, ed. Dreves and Clemens Blume (Leipzig, 1886-192.1), sol: 484. Cf. the assessments ofF. J. E. Raby, A History of Christian-Latin Poetry from the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages

Introduction

33

wrought figurative language that resembles poetry in its density and musicality, yet with no semblance of meter or regular form. Nowadays we would call it free verse. The source of this "freedom" lies not only in Hildegard's visionary inspiration but also in the character of the monastic Office itself. As jean Leclercq has observed, texts for the Office were "obliged to conform to the laws of a special rhythm which is not like that of ordinary or even of artistic prose nor yet that of recited poetry." 75 Before the advent of the rhymed sequence, liturgical chants other than hymns were generally nonmetrical, influenced primarily by the Vulgate Psalms. Hildegard's originality, then, lies less in the invention of new forms than in the audacious and luxuriant elaboration of old ones. It is the repertoire of votive antiphons and responsories, rather than the classical or the new accentual sequence, which provides the closest analogues to her composition. To sense the disparity between her idiom and the mainstream liturgical poetry of her day, we need only compare a few lines of hers with a strophe on the same subject by Adam of St. Victor, a highly regarded contemporary poet. The subject, than which no more conventional can be conceived, is the opposition of Eve and Mary. Here are Adam's neat rhyming trochaics: Eva prius interemit, Sed Maria nos redemit Mediante filio; Prima pareos nobis luctum, Sed secunda vitae fructum Protulit cum gaudio. 76

Eve once destroyed us, But Mary redeemed us By means of her Son. One mother bore sadness; The other with gladness Fruit second to none.

(Oxford, 192.7): 2.94; Joseph de Ghellinck, L'Essorde la littérature latine au Xllw siecle (Paris, 1946), 1: 198; joseph Szovérffy, A Concise History of Medieval Latín Hymnody (Leiden, 1985): 86. 75jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York, 1961): 2.99. 76"Sequentia V in nativitate Domini," in Adam von Sankt Viktor: Siimtliche Sequenun, ed. Franz Wellner (Munich, 1955): 48.

Introduction

34

And here is Hildegard on the same theme: O darissima mater sancte medicine, tu ungenta per sanctum Filium tuum infudisti in plangentia vulnera mortis, que Eva edificavit in tormenta animarum. (no. 9)

O most radiant mother

of sacred healing! Through your holy Son, you poured ointments on the sobbing wounds of death that Eve built into torments for souls.

Adam's sequences are regular, highly finished, and easy to memorize. Hildegard, on the other hand, brought to her songs a directness, an imagistic bravura, that does away with the boundary between dogmatic statement and rhapsodic expression. Her sentences are not concisely crafted like Adam's, but their irregular flow has a rhythm of its own. Whereas Adam preferred succinct parallel clauses, Hildegard reveled in periodic sentences spun from strings of relative clauses, participial and prepositional phrases. 77 Compare the beloved Marian anthem "Alma Redemptoris Mater": Alma Redemptoris Matee, quae pervia caeli Porta manes et stella maris, succurre cadenti Surgere qui curat populo; tu quae genuisti, Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem; Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere,78 The Carolingian antiphon is written ín hexameters, of course. But its melody hardly stresses the fact, and Hildegard-who had 77Qn the traditional rhetoric and syntax of prayer see Ricarda Liver, Die Nachwirkung der antiken Sakralsprache im christlichen Gebet des lateinischen und italienischen Mittelalters (Bern, 1979). 1BCorpus antiphonalium officii, vol. 3, lnvitatoria et antiphonae, ed. R.-j. Hesben (Rome, 1968), no. IJS6.

lntroduction

35

not studied grammar or rhetoric-might have "heard" something more like this: Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli porta manes et stella maris, succurre cadenti, surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti~ natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem, virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.

Gracious Mother of the Redeemer, heaven's ever-open door and star of the sea, assist your falling people who struggle to rise; you. who were mother, while nature marveled, to your holy Father, a virgin before and after, receiving from Gabriel's lips that greeting "Hail": Have merey on us sinners.

Sprung from its meter, "Alma Redemptoris Mater" yields a syntactic structure dose to that of Hildegard's lyrics, though somewhat more ~¡ophisticated. To take the comparison a step further, the tension between meter and speech rhythms in quantitative verse-even without the addition of music-affords an analogue for the counterpoint between verbal and melodic structures in the

Symphonia.

Hildegard's lyrics, like her prose, are rich in allusions but sparing

in quotations. As Morton Bloomfield once said of Langland, she too "spoke Bible." She was so deeply immersed in the sacred page that her language rings with echoes from the Vulgate, especially from the Psalter and the Song of Songs. Yet these are seldom more than echoes, verses recalled or paraphrased rather than quoted: macula non est in te (Song 4:7)

nullam maculam habes

despic1ens per fenestras, prospiciens per cancellos (Song 2.:9)

columba aspexit per cancellos fenestre

exultavit ut gigans ad currendam viam suam (Ps. 18:6)

ipse pre gaudio sicut gygas in viribus suis surrexit (no.

(no. 49. s).

(no. 54, 1).

so,

xb).

lntroduction Hildegard had a tenacious memory for images and ideas, but no penchant for exact citation. Sorne of her strongest effects are achieved through clustered allusions that carry with them whole structures of meaning. Take the fifth stanza of "O viridissima virga" (no. 19): Unde celi dederunt rorem super gramen et omnis terra leta facta est, quoniam víscera ipsius frumentum protulerunt et quoniam volucres celi nidos in ipsa habuerunt.

So the skies rained dew on the grass and the whole earth exulted, for her womb brought forth wheat, and the birds of heaven made their nests in it.

To appreciate this stanza the reader must be at least subliminally aware of the Advent antiphon "Rorate celi desuper" ("Drop dew, ye heavens, from above," based on Isa. 45:8} and of Christ's parable of the mustard seed (Matt. 13: p.}. The rest of the poem is similarly laced with allusions that presuppose an audience familiar with the Bible, its traditional glosses, and the Catholic liturgy. Footnotes can supply mere information: Mary is the grass and the green earth, the dew is the Spirit that made her fruitful, Christ is both the wheat for eucharistic bread and the tree to which he likened the kingdom of heaven. Yet, even though allegorical values like these shape the sense of the poem, spelling them out in cold prose is like trying to explain a joke: "meaning" can be supplied but all resonance is lost. Hildegard's poems, at their best, are not simply vehides for the immense common stock of symbols. One can take these symbols as a kind of bass continuo to ground the more fluid, unexpected meanings that constitute the "melody" of the poem. In the stanza just cited, what is most impressive is the absence of any direct reference to Mary, so that the supernatural event is implied by purely natural images. Yet even so, there is something miraculous about the swiftness and suddenness of the progression from grass to wheat to the suggested tree with birds in its branches. These birds trace one are of a parabolic sweep down from heaven to earth and back again to the skies, and the birth of Christ takes place just at the midpoint of this cosmic motion.

lntroduction

37

Nonscriptural borrowings are rare and derive most often from the liturgy. In "O lerusalem" (no. 49, xa), the line "ornata regis purpura" is lihed from Venantius Fortunatus's hymn, "Vexilla regis prodeunt," where it describes not the heavenly city but the cross. Many allusions to the Song of Songs evoke not only the biblical text but also its liturgical adaptations for feasts of the Mother of God and the virgin martyrs. More intriguing is the case of "O splendidissima gemma'' (no. xo), which probably takes its title from an exquisite poem by Bruno of Segni: Quis est hic qui pulsat ad ostium, noctis rumpens somnium? Me vocat: O virginum pulcherrima, soror, coniunx, gemma splendidissima. 79

Who is this that knocks at the gate, troubling the dreams of night? He calls me: O fairest of maidens, sister and bride, resplendent gem.

Bruno's song may also be a source for Hildegard's "O choruscans lux stellarum" (no. 69), in which she celebrares the Church as "splendidissima ... gemma" and bride of Christ. His poem ends with the line "quo in regis inducar palatium"; hers with "et veniens veni in palatium regis." But the echoes are distant; it is notoriously hard to pin clown Hildegard's sources, because she made everything she touched her own. Yet, although hers was a character of exceptionally strong will and individuality, our poet made no use of the first person singular. The Symphonia is poetry of public worship; no matter how distinctive the idiom, its content is monumentally objective, almost impersonal. 80 We hear in it the voices of communal prayer Nunc igitur obsecramus, obsecramus te per Verbum tuum (no. 6)

Now then we beseech, we beseech you by your Word

79Szovérffy, Concise History 66. socf. Hennig Brinkmann, "Voraussetzungen und Struktur religioser Lyrik im Mittelalter," Mittellateinisches ]ahrbuch 3 (1966): 39-40.

lntroduction

and exposition: Quia ergo femina mortero instruxit, clara virgo illam interemit (no. 1 2.)

Because a woman constructed death, a bright virgin demolished it.

and unabashed praise: O gloriosissimi lux vivens angeli! (no. 2.9)

O most glorious angels, living light!

On occasion Hildegard took up the erotic voice that had filtered from the Song of Songs, by way of the Apocalypse, into the mainstream of liturgical poetry. Affiliated with the cult of chastity, this voice has a paradoxical ring: O dulcissime amator, o dulcissime amplexator: adiuva nos custodire virginitatem nostram. (no. 57)

O sweetest lover, o giver of sweetest embraces, help us keep our virginity.

lt is this tone which pervades the "Symphonia virginum" just cited, the great song to Saint Ursula (no. 64), and sorne of the Marian pieces (nos. 17, 2.2.). But it would be a mistake to overstress its importance or singularity. Here, as everywhere else, in Hildegard's voice we are hearing one of the many voices of the medieval Church, however strange the intonation. Much of the strangeness is due to her diction, which has acquired a reputation for difficulty. But her language is not at all precious or studied. The problem is that her basic vocabularylike that of the Proven~al troubadours-was quite small, and she relied heavily on certain polyvalent key words. Virtus is virtue, power, grace, divine emanation; the virtutes are moral qualities, but also an order of angels and a choir of celestial maidens who figure in Hildegard's Ordo. 81 Viriditas, literally "verdure," 8 1Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley, 1987): 16-17, 58-6o.

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39

evokes all the resilience and vitality of nature and its source, the Holy Spirit. Words such as radix and materia almost always have a metaphysical sense; the literal meanings of "root" and "matter" or matrix (womb) suggest something very like the Tillichian "ground of being." Instrumentum and ornamentum stand broadly for utility and beauty, but beauty of the imperishable kind that Yeats called the artifice of eternity. Peregrinatio, the classical word for "travel," has a distinctive medieval sense that combines the negative connotation of "exile" with the positive concept of "pilgrimage." In keeping with the rhetoric of medieval prayer, Hildegard's language also shows a marked tendency toward abstraction: prophetia in lieu of propheta, divinitas for Deus, formatio for forma. 82 Sorne of her verbs appear in contexts that suggest more general meanings than they normally have: edificare, suffocare, and ungere mean "to build," "to choke," "to anoint," but in her usage they can metaphorically represent any form of creation, destruction, or healing. There is no English equivalent for her sudare: "perspire" and "exude" are limp analogues. Hildegard's verb calls forth the image of a sun-drenched tree yielding balm, with the same generous abundance by which holy thoughts and deeds flow from a sanctified heart. Sorne of the constraints imposed by limited vocabulary are turned to advantage through rhetorical figures. Hildegard was partial to the t.rope of polyptoton, or the use of different inclined forms of the same word: O vinus Sapientie, que circuiens circuisti (no. 2.)

O energy of Wisdom, you who circled circling.

A related figure is annominatio, which links etymologically related words-mistico misterio (no. 2.1), vivificans vita (no. 2.4), and the like. 83 These figures chime pleasantly in Latin but drive translators to despair. The English language was not meant to 82Cf. Liver, Nachwirkung 99-101; Christine Mohrmann, Etudes sur le latin des chrétiens (Rome, 1965), 3: 2.13-14. BlBronarski, Lieder 16-18; Liver, Nachwirkung 302..

lntroduction render lines such as "qui in ardore ardentis 1 effulsisti, radix" (no. 36). Other trapes are used sparingly, for instance anaphora, or the repetition of initial words (nos. 32, 57), and prosopopoeia, or direct speech (nos. 64, 65). Among the more salient features of Hildegard's style is her fondness for the grand gesture. No less than fifty of her songs, or about two-thirds, begin with a solemn apostrophe: "O virga ac diadema," "O victoriosissimi triumphatores," "O felix apparicio." Here we can detect sorne influence from the great "O" antiphons of Advent, which are among the most exalted seasonal compositions in the liturgy. 84 Hildegard hada corresponding zeal for superlatives and sudden outbursts. The ecstatic "O" can surface even in the middle of a line or strophe: O tener flos campi et o dulcis viriditas pomi et o sarcina sine medulla (no. 49)

O tender flower of the field, O sweet green of the apple, O burden without pith.

Another mark of grandiloquence, echoing the Psalter, is the "O quam" construction. ss O quam magna est benignitas

Salvatoris!

(no.

1)

O how great is the Savior's

kindness!

O quam magnum miraculum est!

O what a great mirade it is!

O quam preciosa est virginitas

O how precious is the virginity of this virgin!

(no. r6)

virginis huius!

(no.

22\

Less often, dauses are linked with a string of parallel ets to create a psalmlike, incantatory texture, as in the first stanza of "O Ecdesia" (no. 64). The feature for which Hildegard's poetry is best known is its 84 Bronarski, Lieder 26. These are the antiphons, beginning with tia," which underlie the English hymn "O come Emmanuel." BSLiver, Nachwirkung 217-18.

"O

Sapien-

lntroduction unusual imagery, which can seem outlandish insofar as it reflects her compressed, synesthetic mode of perception. lt is not simply that Hildegard used multiple metaphors to characterize a single object; this is a common trait of devotional writing. We find it, for instance, in Saint Bernard's famous sermon on the Name of Jesus: But the name of Jesus is more than light, it is also food .... Every food of the mind is dry if it is not dipped in that oil; it is tasteless if not seasoned by that salt. Write what you will, 1 shall not relish it unless it tells of Jesus. Talk or argue about what you will, 1 shall not relish it if you exclude the name of Jesus. Jesus to me is honey in the mouth, music in the ear, a song in the heart. Again, [his name] is medicine. Does one of us feel sad? Let the name of Jesus come into his heart, from there let it spring to his mouth, so that shining like the dawn it may dispel all darkness and make a doudless sky,86

Beginning with his metaphor of the holy name as light, Bernard runs quickly through the images of food, oil, salt, honey, music, and medicine befare circling back to the light of dawn. But confusion cannot arise because all these metaphors are logically and grammatically discrete; they are not mingled but juxtaposed. 87 The resultant sensual richness contributes to an impression of spiritual and intellectual richness, but each element is singled out for separate analysis. Contrast the very different use of metaphor in Hildegard's responsory for the patriarchs and prophets (no. p.):

O vos felices radices cum quibus opus miraculorum et non opus criminum per torrens iter perspicue umbre plantatum est.

O you happy roots, with whom the work of miracles was plantedand not the work of crimesin a rushing course of translucent shadow.

B6Bemard of Clairvaux, On the Song o{Songs 15.6, trans. Kilian Walsh (Kalamazoo, 1976), 1: no. B7Patrick Diehl observes that in medieval religious lyric "it is rare for a series of metaphors to establish a continuity of vehicle, precisely because continuity of tenor is assured from the start" (The Medieval European Religious Lyric: An Ars Poetica [Berkeley, 1985]: 12.4).

lntroduction The images in these lines mix freely and unself-consciously. Roots evoke the lineage of Christ, and brieht shadow, the chiaroscuro of prophetic vision. But although the two images are grammatically linked, their unity is intuitive rather than logical; the reader who sets out to construct a single coherent picture can go badly astray. As in Bernard's sermon, the signs refer vertically to the signified and not horizontally to each other. Yet where Bernard's syntax discriminates, Hildegard's unites, creating possibilities both for confusion and for extraordinary richness. Each image is an independent unit of meaning, a motif, that can appear in a variety of contexts. Just as she combined many short, formulaic musical phrases to spin a long melody, Hildegard could vary and recombine units of textual meaning to create unexpected wholes. One must admit that, as a craftsman, she had her faults. She could be prolix, obscure to the point of opacity, or, more rarely, banal to the point of dullness: vos estis inter illos

you stand among them

ut et in te factum est

so it was in you also.

qui hcc faciunt (no. 40)

(no. 17, 6)

who do thcsc things.

Her diction is sometimes caught uneasily between visionary élan and the more prosaic discourse of exegesis. Logical connectives (unde, ideo, ita quod) serve in her prose works to introduce exhortations and allegories; in the Symphonia they can seem intrusive. Nor is the promised logic always apparent. Yet this feature reminds us that even in her lyrics, part of Hildegard's literary purpose was didactic. The exegetical background of her work is especially striking in the hymn "O ignee Spiritus" (no. 2.7), in which seven of the thirteen stanzas begin with argumentative conjunctions: Cum vero, Sed et cum, Quando autem, and so forth. Such connectives occur more frequently in the songs incorporated into the prose miscellany; in the Symphonia manuscripts many of them have been edited out.

Introduction

43

Another peculiarity, typical of medieval religious lyric but disconcerting to modern readers, is the instability of pronoun reference. Sorne lyrics (nos. x, 21) open with direct address in the second person and subside into third-person statement, while "O virga ac diadema" (no. 20) vacillates between the two. Patrick Diehl remarks of such shifts that, "in the speech of everyday life, we treat animals, prisoners, spouses, and children in this way, now speaking to them as persons, now speaking past them as if they were objects, but one would not expect God and the saints to receive the same treatment. " 88 One might reply that the holy ones are, like beasts, not expected to reply; like prisoners, a captive audience; and like family, so intimate that the worshiper can take unusual liberties. More seriously, it is important to recall that while a liturgical text is directed "vertically" in prayer, it is also directed "horizontally" to inspire and edify the congregation. A more shocking example of pronoun shift occurs in "Nunc gaudeant" (no. 67), in which the second person refers to Satan in lines 6-9 and to God in lines 1 1-1 2. Unde, o turpissime serpens, confusus es, quoniam quos tua estimatio in visceribus suis habuit nunc fulgent in sanguine Filii Dei, et ideo laus tibi sit, rex altissime.

So you, shameful serpent, are confounded, for those your jealousy held in its maw now gleam in the blood of God's Son. Praise then be yours, O King Most High!

Here the change of reference suggests a dramatic context, and the prose miscellany confirms this hypothesis. "Nunc gaudeant" is part of a brief scenario in which a voice from heaven rebukes Satan, the Spirit rejo ices, and the wretched earth laments. 89 Given that the Symphonia lyrics were meant to be sung, it may seem perverse to consider their sonority as purely verbal constructs. But even from this perspective, sorne of them have a HHDiehl, Religious Lyric 167.

89 Pitra

361.

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44

pronounced musicality, based on assonance, alliteration, annominatio, and occasional rhyme. Like everything else in the songs, however, these four ornaments resist the Jure of regularity. "O Ierusalem" (no. 49) demonstrates all of them: Et ita turres tue, o lerusalem, rutilant et candent per ruborem et per candorem sanctorum

So your towers, O Jerusalem, gleam ruddy and bright with the rosy glow and the sparkling white of the saints

Unde vos, o ornati et o coronati ... succurrite nobis famulantibus et in exilio laborantibus.

O you adorned ones and O you crowned ones ...

(9)

(10)

help us who serve and labor in exile.

Most writers of artistic prose were careful to follow the rules of cursus, oc cadence, which medieval rhetoricians had adapted from antiquity. According to this convention, every sentence or important clause had to end in one of four paneros of stressed and unstressed syllables as follows: planus - u u - u tardus - u u - u u velox - u u u u - u dispondaicus - u u u - u

A review of the sixty-nine Symphonia lyrics shows that forty-six, exactly two-thirds, end with sorne form of cursus. The cursus planus is the most common with twenty examples, the velox least frequent with only two. Within the longer pieces, seven of the ten strophes in "O Ecclesia" (no. 64) have proper cursus endings, as do eight of the nine in "Columba aspexit" (no. 54), and nine of the twelve in "O presul vere civitatis" (no. 45). Cursus rhythms are natural to the structure of Latín, and if Hildegard had been following the rules systematically, there would no doubt be fewer

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45

exceptions. Nevertheless, her strong predilection for these cadences marks the lyrics as less "raw" than has sometimes been argued. As a verbal artist, Hildegard did not have the craftsmanship of a Notker or a Peter Abelard. But neither was she the inept, negligible figure that the standard histories of hymnography would have us believe. Often conventional in her subjects, she was wholly original in her treatment and style. Her poems, even apart from their musical settings, leave an indelible impression of freshness and power. What she lacked in fluency, Hildegard made up in sheer immediacy. Not words but images formed her native idiom, and in her lyrics these images can leap out of their verbal wrappings to assault the mind with all the force and inevitability of a Jungian dream. Startling at first, even incoherent, they slowly or suddenly explode into sense, revealing the lineaments of ·a pattern that-if one is a twelfth-century Christian-one has always known. Themes of the Symphonia

Like all that Hildegard wrote, the Symphonia celebrates the mystery of God-become-man in the child of Mary. Virtually evcrything in her sphere of discourse is in sorne way a condition, a consequence, or an analogue of this event. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, that is, angels and human beings, but in his etemal wisdom he was already looking forward to the incamation of the Word. Thus, in the first and thematically very significant lyric, "O vis etemitatis," Hildegard slips with astonishing speed from the ideal creation in the mind of God to the coming of Christ. Adam's fall, which presumably occasioned the Redeemer's birth, is merely implied in passing.90 When the Savior was bom, our poet says in her elliptical way, the first man's "garment"-or mortal body-was "cleansed from the greatest suffering." The figure of Adam fascinated Hildegard, who 90J have argued elsewhere (Sister of Wisdom s s-64) that Hildegard believed in the absolute predestination of Christ-the doctrine tflat the Incarnation was God's purpose in creating the world rather than a consequence of Adam's sin.

lntroduction saw him both as a historical person and as an exemplar of the human race, as well as the precursor of Christ. In "O quam mirabilis" (no. 3) he appears at the center of creation as God's consummate work, in which all others are integrated, while "O eterne Deus" (no. 7) reveals Christ, the second Adam, as the cosmic man who in turn integra tes the scattered limbs of humanity into a single body, which God created "in the primal dawn 1 before all creation." In the short first section of her cycle, Hildegard dramatizes all the preconditions for Christ's coming: the creation of the world, God's "ancient counsel" of salvation, the making of man, and (obliquely) the Fall. The first three songs are pure celebrations praising the Creator under many names-"strength of eternity," "energy of Wisdom," "foreknowledge of the divine heart." There follow four prayers to the Redeemer in which the poet, now pleading on behalf of fallen humanity, invokes both the goodness of creation (no. 6) and the blood of Christ (no. 5). lt is noteworthy that, however strange her expressions, Hildegard remains entirely orthodox in her theology. For instance, she does not simplistically identify God the Father as Creator and Christ as the

Redeemer. In both cases the initiative comes from the Father but the act is accomplished by the Son, in keeping with patristic views of the Trinity. The Virgin Mary holds the next place after God because her role in history is not just chronologically but also logically prior to the other great events of salvation-the gift of the Holy Spirit, the building of the Church, and the deeds of the saints-which Hildegard exalts in the last two thirds of her cyde. The meaning of Mary for the abbess can be gauged in part by what she does not say: in her lyrics there is no sign of interest in the Virgin's psychology, no sentimental devotion, no apocryphal legends or mirades-in short, nothing at all about Mary's life before, after, or apart from the Incarnation. 91 Three motifs occur time and again (although, like Hildegard's melodic formulas, they are ceaselessly 91 Newman, Sister o(Wisdom 159-60. See also Peter Walter, "Virgo filium dei portasti: Maria in den Gesiingen der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen," Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 2.9 (1977): 75-96.

Introduction

47

varied): the divine motherhood, ·rhe virginity of Mary, and the comparison with Eve. The first theme needs no comment, but the second lends itself to misunderstanding. Mary's virginity meant more to Hildegard than an absence of sexual contact or a proof of Christ's divine paternity. It is deeply bound up with her traditional idea of paradise, in which sex as we know it did not exist and Eve, had she remained as she was, would have borne children without loss of virginity. 92 By remaining inviolate yet divinely fruitful, Mary regains the lost heritage of Eve. Her body becomes the emblem of paradise regained as well as the path to it: Unde dulce germen, quod Filius ipsius est, per clausuram ventris eius paradisum aperuit. (no. 2.2.)

Thus the tender shoot that is her Son opened paradise through the cloister of her womb.

For this reason Hildegard constantly associates Mary images of growth, greenness, flowering: she is the "shining lily" (no. 17), "the greenest branch" (no. 19), and so forth. Of course these images are scriptural and carry their full typological weight, but Hildegard chose them in preference to innumerable others that she could equally well have used. The other striking feature in her treatment of Mary is the way she handles the ancient Ave/Eva motif-the notion that Mary's purity and obedience reversed the corruption and rebellion of Eve, thus redeeming womankind per se. This theme occurs in at least half the Marian songs. But alongside it runs another current of thought which asserts that, just as Christ not only redeems but also is Adam, so Eve in a sense is Mary. This idea is memorably expressed in no. 16, where Hildegard says that woman "beautified heaven 1 more than she formerly marred the earth" (cf. no 1 2. and no. 2.0, 4a). Ultimately, once salvation has been accomplished, the fallen Adam and Eve are at one with the redeemed human race. 9ZHeinrich Schipperges, ed., "Ein unveroffentlichtes Hildegard-Fragment,"

IV.z.9, Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 40 (1956): 72..

Introduction Union with God and its corollary, the communion of saints, are the themes on which the rest of the Symphonia spins variations. Holiness and oneness become possible through the Holy Spirit, the source of all unity in creation: the Spirit gives life to elements, souls, and bodies, and binds all nature into one (no. 2.8, 4a-4b). With respect to human beings, the Spirit is the one who infuses desire for God, vanquishes sin, and (most emphatically) heals the wounds it has caused: Sanctus es vivificando formas. Sanctus es ungendo periculose fractos, sanctus es tergendo fetida vulnera. (no. z.S, Ia-Ib)

Holy are you, giving life to the Forms. Holy are you, anointing the dangerously broken; holy are you, cleansing the fetid wounds.

This tendency to see evil in terms of the suffering it inflicts on the sinner is typical of Hildegard. However, she looks on the saints less as forgiven sinners than as beings in whom the Spirit already dwells in glory. They are lights, mirrors, flames, epiphanies of Christ or of his bride, the Church. 93 But above all, Hildegard loved the imagery of Apocalypse 2.1 in which all the saints coalesce into a single double-natured vision, the bride of Christ and City of God. Each saint becomes a living stone in the walls of Jerusalem (cf. r Pet. 2.:5): Fenestre tue, Ierusalem, cum topazio et saphiro specialiter sunt decorate. In quibus dum fulges, o Ruperte ... (no. 49, 3a-3b)

Your windows, jerusalem, are specially embellished with topaz and sapphire, in which ... you gleam, O Rupert .. .

Iste, turris excelsa de ligno Libani et cipresso facta,

He, a lofty tower built from the wood of Lebanon and cypress,

!llPeter Walter, "Die Heiligen in der Dichtung der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen," in Brück, Hildegard von Bingen 2.II-37·

lntroduction iacincto et sardio ornata est, urbs precellens artes aliorum artificum. (no. 54, z.a)

49

is adorned with jacinth and ruby, a city surpassing the arts of other artisans.

The image of the City allowed Hildegard to set each individual saint in counterpoint with the full community of the redeemed. Doubtless she, like many poets before her, took delight in the vision of the City as a work of art. One might recall the tenthcentury hymn "Urbs beata Hierusalem," sung at the consecration of churches,94 or the later rhythmus by Hildebert of Lavardin: Me receptet Syon illa, Syon David urbs tranquilla; cuius faber auctor lucis, cuius porte lignum crucis; cuius claves lingua Petri, cuius cives semper leti; cuius muri lapis vivus, cuius custos rex festivus. In hac urbe lux solennis, ver eternum, pax perennis; in hac odor implens celos, in hac semper festum melos.9s

May noble Zion harbor me, Zion, David's tranquil city; her founder is the fount of light, her gates the wood of Calvary, her keys the tongue of Peter; her citizens are ever joyful, her walls are made of living stone, her keeper is the festal king. In this city solemn light, spring eternal, lasting peace. In her, fragrance filling heaven; in her, music ever festive.

What is unusual in the Symphonia, however, is Hildegard's interest in the process of building the City, a theme to which she also devoted the third book of the Scivias. She cared not only for the edificium but also for the edificatio, the relation between the saint's life of spiritual effort on earth and his or her glory in heaven. In this context, the image of building is but one of several Hildegard used to evoke the Godward striving of the earthbom. Saint Maximin longs for the eagle's wings and rises "like the smoke of incense 1 to the pillar of praise" (no. 54). Ursula races through the skies like a sapphire cloud (no. 64), and the voice of her blood mounts up to the throne of God (oo. 65). Music itself is 94 Printed in Dreves and Blume, eds., Analecta hymnica :z.: 73 (no. 93). 9SHiJdebert of Lavardin, "De sancta Trinitate," in Carmina minora, ed. A. Brian Scott (Leipzig, 1969): P·-B·

so

lntroduction

an ascending motion, and so is prayer. The whole life of the Church on earth continually aspires heavenward, infusing a powerful dynamism into a vision that, in its meticulously well-ordered detail, might otherwise have the appearance of stasis. The glorified saints, in turn, look down on the earth in compassionate solicitude for those who invoke them. In a well-known icon of the Trinity, God's dealings with the human race are summed up in three succinct images-a tree, a building, and a mountain. 96 These emblems, in their severa! permutations, can also be seen as master themes of the Symphonia. The tree and the building are metonymic for the two images of supreme fulfillment-the Garden at the beginning of time, the City at its end. Banished from the Garden, the human race makes its slow and tortuous pilgrimage toward the City by way of the Mountain, which stands for so many theophanies in Scripture: Sinai of the Law, Tabor of the Transfiguration, Calvary of the Passion, Olivet of the Ascension. In the Symphonia, as we have seen, the Garden evokes the lost virginal Eden that Mary reentered. It is a purely natural image, but it is also purely miraculous, for Hildegard says nothing of cultivation. Only the warmth of the sun and the dew of heaven bring forth the marvelous flower. When the same image is used of a saint, it has the connotation of pure grace blossoming in the soul without need of effort. Thus the virgin apostle john is praised as a "wondrous flower" that never withered or faded, because the gardener of Eden planted him (no. 3 s). The building of the City, on the other hand, is a collaborative effort; in the Scivias it is a universal image for the moral life, representing the constant interaction of divine grace with human struggle. Typical here is Saint Maximin, portrayed in a single strophe as both "architect" and "wall of the temple" (no. 54, 3b}. The active and the passive image present the same reality, sanctification, from man's side and from God's. Finally there is the mountain, a complex image that can be 9 61 have in mind the widely reproduced fourteenth-century icon by Andrei Rublev, now in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. The icon symbolically depicts the hospitality of Abraham (Gen. I8:I-IJ): three angels signifying the divine Persons are seated around a table, and the landscape in the background is re· duced to the three symbolic objects.

Introduction

51

nuanced in several ways. As a time-honored symbol of contemplation, it represents supreme human effort drawing near to God; thus Saint Disibod's life as a hermit is signified by the "mountain of a cloistered mind" (no. 45) which shall never be leveled in God's judgment (no. 42.). Because Hildegard's monasteries, first St. Disibod and then the Rupertsberg, were themselves built on mountains, she arrived naturally at an equation between the mountain and the exalted saint, or the monastic life as such. On the other hand a mountain, as a natural image of the sublime, can evoke the vast distance between God and man. A monastery at the summit of a cliff is meant to be, like the divine majesty, inaccessible and awesome; it suggests alienation from the things of this world. In "O Ecclesia" (no. 64), Hildegard says that the martyr's "scorn for the world is 1 like Mount Bethel." This image seems to be the prerogative of a spiritual elite. If the City is the ultimate symbol of community, the Mountain stands for its complement, the ascetic spirit that renounces secular community in order to meet God in the heroic encounter of contemplation or martyrdom. For the sake of analysis, 1 have isolated these three images in order to study the thematic connotations of each. But in actuidity they occur side by side, along with many others (fire and water, dawn and daylight, weddings, armies) which cannot be examined here. 1 believe the attentive reader will discover that, although Hildegard's images may at first seem to proliferate madly and mingle promiscuously, her songs in fact develop a limited range of themes that "chime together," as she liked to say, to create the symphonic harmony advertised in her tide. And her images, though they may strike the uninitiated as verging on surrealism, carry precise conceptual values that stabilize, but never freeze, the mercurial flow of her imagination.

The Manuscripts and the Order of Songs The Symphonia as an ordered cyde, including both texts and music, comes down to us in two late-twelfth-century manuscripts, one complete and one fragmentary. The older, defective manuscript is codex 9 at the library of St.-Pieters-&-Paulusabdij, Den-

JI

~tt

_tt,

1

, m "rru 111Jr

Dendermonde, St.-Pieters-&-Paulusabdij, Cod. 9, fol. 154\ containing the songs "Hodie aperuit," "Quia ergo femina," and "Cum processit factura" (nos. 11-IJ).

Wiesbaden, Landesbibliothek, Hs.

2.

("Riesenkodex"), fol. 467r.

54

lntroduction

dermonde, Belgium (hereafter D). lt is this codex which Hildegard sent to the monks of Villers; it was produced in the Rupertsberg scriptorium around 1175, probably under her direct supervision. The second manuscript is the so-called Riesenkodex or "giant codex" containing Hildegard's collected works (Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Hs. 2.; hereafter R). P.repared at the same scriptorium in the decade after the abbess's death (c. 1180-1190), the Riesenkodex was apparently compiled with a view to her canonization, for it contains all her "inspired" writings and excludes only the scientific works that she wrote on her own initiative, soto speak. 97 This is the celebrated volume that the humanist Trithemius of Sponheim and later Goethe saw and admired. Today it remains an impressive object, bound with a heavy sixteenth-century leather binding, metal studs, and a chain; it measures twelve by eighteen inches and weighs no less than thirty-three pounds. Of its 481 parchment leaves, written in double columns, the last sixteen (fols. 466r•-481vb) contain the Symphonia and the Ordo virtutum. R also includes lyrics without neumes at two points: fourteen occur in the final Scivias vision (fols. 132.v•-zn•b) and twentysix in the miscellany (fols. 404rb-407va). These doublets have independent textual authority, for the Scivias, the Symphonia, and the miscellany were copied into the manuscript by three different hands and represent separate exemplars. 98 Unlike the Riesenkodex, the much smaller Dendermonde manuscript (approximately eight by eleven inches) is in a poor state of preservation and has lost severalleaves, although the ones that remain are quite legible. lt originally consisted of 173 folios containing tJ¡e Book of Life's Merits, the Liber viarum Domini (Book of the Ways of the Lord) by Hildegard's friend Elisabeth of Schonau, and the Symphonia. After its sojourn at Villers, the manuscript subsequently found its way to Gembloux, thence to !17for a detailed discussion of this MS. see Schrader and Führkotter, Echtheit IH-79· A photographic facsimile of folios 466-481, containing the music, has been published by Joseph Gmelch, Die Kompositionen der heiligen Hildegard (Düsseldorf, 1913). !IBSchrader and Führkotter, Echtheit 157.

Introduction

55

Afflighem, and finally to Dendermonde. 99 The text that concerns us is found in folios 153'-170v, which today have become detached from the rest of the manuscript. The songs are neatly written in single columns with twelve lines of text and music to a page. One sheet is missing after folio 15 5v and another after folio 164v; thus the hymn "Ave generosa" (no. 17) and the sequence "O Ierusalem" (no. 49) are fragmentary. The first of these gaps is also responsible for the loss of a few Marian songs, as it occurs in the part of the Symphonia devoted to the Virgin. In addition, at least one page and possibly an entire gathering has been lost at the beginning of the Symphonia, for there is no title in the manuscript, and the first song that does appear, "O magne Pater" (no. 6), is accompanied by a differentia or psalm cadence that must belong to an antiphon from the preceding page. It is most likely that the missing page contained the responsory "O vis eternitatis" (no. 1) and various antiphons addressed to God the Father and Christ (nos. 2.-5). If Peter Dronke is right in positing the loss of a full eight-leaved gathering at this point, it may have contained the Ordo virtutum, as he surmises.too In its present fragmentary state, D contains fifty-seven songs, as opposed to seventy-five in R. But the loss of pages from D and the addition of late compositions to R do not fully account for the differences between the two manuscripts. Most significantly, thc cycle has been completely rearranged in R: the order of songs within each section is different, the sections themselves have been reshuffled, and the longer pieces have been separated from the shorter ones and placed together at the end of the work, thus creating two cycles instead of one. In brief, the arrangement of the Symphonia in the two manuscripts is as follows: D

[initial gap in MS.] God the Father-2 songs

R

(shorter songs)

God the Father, Christ, Sapientia-7 songs

9 9 lnformation graciously supplied by DomE. Van de Vyver, OSB, librarían at St.-Pieters-&-Paulusabdij, Dendermonde. JOODronke, "Composition" 391.

lntroduction Virgin Mary- 12. songs [with gap in MS.) Holy Spirit, Karitas, TrinityS songs Angels-2. songs Patriarchs and prophets-z. songs Apostles-2. songs Saint john-2. songs Saint Disibod-3 songs Martyrs-2. songs Confessors-? songs Saint Rupert-3 songs Virgins-3 songs Widows-z song Innocents- 1 song Saint Ursula-13 songs Ecclesia-2. songs

Holy Spirit, Karitas-2. songs Virgin Mary-11 songs

Angels-2. songs Patriarchs and prophets-:z. songs Apostles-2. songs Saint john-2. songs Martyrs-1 songs Confessors-:z. songs Saint Disibod-4 songs Saint Rupert-3 songs Virgins-:z. songs Saint Ursula-z z songs Innocents- I song Ecclesia-4 songs Kyrie

(longer songs)

Holy Spirit-:z. songs Virgin Mary-4 songs Saints: Matthias- I song Boniface- I song Disibod- 1 song Eucharius-:z. songs Maximin-z song Rupert- 1 song Ursula-2. songs "Symphony of virgins" "Symphony of widows" In both versions, the Symphonia is clearly arranged along hierarchicallines. God is honored first, then the Virgin Mary, highest of created beings; after her come the angels and the various ranks of saints-patriarchs and prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors

Introduction

57

(bishops and other saints not martyred), virgins, wiqows, and innocents. Finally come the antiphons to be used at the dedication of a church, in which the "saint'' to be honored is Ecclesia herself, the personified bride of God and community of the faithful. Individual saints are celebrated under the general category to which they belong: John among the apostles, Rupert among the confessors, and so forth. The cyclical principie itself was not new. In the ninth century Notker of St. Gall arranged the songs in his Liber ymnorum according to the liturgical year, beginning with Christmas. The second book of Abelard's Hymnarius Paraclitensis follows the same principie, but the third, devoted to the saints, is organized like the Symphonia. Aher the Marian hymns come those honoring the angels, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and holy women, with individual saints under their proper categories. The book ends with All Saints (Hildegard's Ecclesia).101 Since this principie governs D, it probably derives from Hildegard herself, so it is this order which I have followed in arranging this edition. In order to remain faithful to Hildegard's structural principies, 1 have inserted the additional material from R where it fits naturally into the D arrangement, rather than following the pattern of duplication created by the R redactor. Within subsections 1 have followed the order of songs in D, filling the gaps with material from R which we can reasonably suppose was contained on the missing leaves. The scribe who copied the Symphonia for the Riesenkodex cannot have used D as an exemplar, since that manuscript had already been given to the monks of Villers. Either both extant manuscripts were created from a single exemplar, now lost, or, as 1 have suggested, the nuns had retained the music in loose leaves or gatherings. The second possibility would account for the loss of two songs and the rearrangement of pieces within sections. But in either case, the R scribe introduced new principies of order and, in effect, regularized what he or she may have perceived as eccentricities in the earlier arrangement. In addition to separating tOtjoseph Szovérffy, ed., Peter Abelard's Hymnarius Paraclitensis, z vols. (Al-

bany, 1975).

sB

lntroduction

the longer songs from the shorter ant•vhons and responsories, the redactor of R made the following revisions in the D order: (a) In D, twelve songs to the Virgin Mary fall between two addressed to God the Father and five to the Holy Spirit or the Trinity. In R, all nine songs addressed to God precede those which honor Mary. (b) D places Saint Disibod among the apostles; R more plausibly ranks him as a confessor . (e) In D, Saint Ursula and her companions follow the Holy Innocents; in R they appear with the virgins. All these changes serve to normalize oddities in the original order; but the oddities themselves can tell us something about Hildegard's perceptions. To begin with the second, Saint Disibod was a seventh-century Irish missionary to the Rhineland, who is said to have founded a monastery and been appointed bishop. 102 As the first evangelist in the region, he would merit the title of apostolicus vir oc, by extension, apostle. By placing her patron in the same league with Saint John the Evangelist, Hildegard was undeniably exalting his status, and thereby the prestige of the monastery which bore his name. 103 As for Saint Ursula and her companions, these legendary maidens could have been revered among either the virgins or the martyrs. But Hildegard surprisingly chose to set them among the Holy Innocents. In so doing she emphasized the similarity between the eleven thousand girlmartyrs and the young boys slain by King Herod; and it is also the innocence of Ursula which she highlights in "O Ecclesia" (no. 64). In the same composition, the martyred girl becomes a prototype of the virgin Church, which occupies the next and final place in the cycle. Thus Hildegard used the figure of Ursula to achieve a smooth and convincing transition, giving the impression that she I02Hildegard of Bingen, Vita Sancti Disibodi, PL 197: 1095-1 u6. IOJCf. Richard Landes, "The Making of a Medieval Historian: Ademar of Chabannes and Aquitaine at the Turn of the Millenniurn" (Ph.D. diss. Princeton, 1984), a study of an eleventh-century rnonk who devoted his entire life to advancing the cult of his patron, Saint Martial of Lirnoges, to the status of apostle.

lntroduction

59

ultimately meant the Symphonia as a Gesamtwerk rather than a miscellany. The most interesting of the oddities is the place of the Virgin, who has the most prominent role in the entire work. By setting Mary midway between God the Father and the Holy Spirit, in the place where one would expect to find Christ, Hildegard was making a pointed theological statement. The Virgin, for her, was not one saint among others but the unique Mother of God, "the fixed end of the eternal counsel," as Dante has Saint Bernard say in the Paradiso. As the chosen vessel of the Incarnation, Mary belongs not with the other saints, a little lower than the angels, but in the very heart of God, the place of her Son. Every one of the sixteen lyrics addressed to her celebrates her divine childbearing, which God had ordained from before the foundation of the world. The songs, then, are so many verbal and musical icons of the Madonna and Child. For this reason 1 have preserved the eccentricity in the construction of D, even though the R redactor apparently felt it to be a sin against theological propriety. Thus the section on "Father and Son" is followed by that on "Mother and Son." Readers familiar with the German edition of the Symphonia will notice this restoration of its original structure as one of the chief differences in the present text. The German editors, Barth, Ritscher, and Schmidt-Gorg, first printed the fifty-seven songs from D and then picked up the remaining pieces in the order that they appear in R, thus trebling the hierarchical pattern and reducing the overall structure of the cycle to incoherence. Aside from D and R, two other manuscripts contain fragments of Hildegard's music. A thirteenth-century codex in Vienna (Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 1016) includes neumes for the two short pieces she composed for Mass, the Kyrie and the alleluia-verse (no. 18), on folios n8v-n9r. Her responsory "0 vos imitatores" (no. 39) appears with its music on folio 40v of an important early manuscript, written c. 1154-II70 at the Rupertsberg and the monasteries of Zwiefalten and St. Disibod. This manuscript, now in Stuttgart (Landesbibliothek, Cod. Theol. Phil. 2.5 3), also indudes texts without neumes for no. 6, "O magne Pater," and no. 68, "O orzchis Ecclesia," both on folio z.8r. In addition, the Stutt-

6o

Introduction

gan manuscript contains one segment of the miscellany, including nine Marian songs, on folio 54 r-v. A second Vienna manuscript (Cod. 881) incorporates texts of three songs to Saint Disibod (nos. 41, 42., 45) in a letter to Abbot Kuno, folios 42.v-43v. Finally, the Vienna codex 963 contains a complete text of the miscellany On folios 1 55r-1 59v. The Text and Translations In establishing the text for this edition I have relied primarily on D and R, although I have also collated the lyrics that appear in the Stuttgart codex 2.53 and the three Vienna codices, 88!, 963, and 1016. Readings from the Symphonia proper are preferred, but I have adopted a few superior variants from the Scivias and miscellany versions of the text. Most of the variants are due to simple scribal errors or commonplace spelling variants. 1 have followed the onhography of the manuscripts; in the case of variants 1 have chosen the spelling more widely attested or, if neither is preferred, the more standard usage. Punctuation is my own. Both D and R indicate the beginnings of stanzas, strophes, and responsorial verses with capitalletters. In this edition, 1have used Arabic numerals to number the stanzas of hymns and long freeform compositions; numerals followed by letters (u, 1b) designate the strophic pairs in sequences. Antiphons and responsories have only line numbers for convenient reference. Line breaks are not indicated in the manuscripts at all, for text and music are written continuously. In most cases 1 have based my divisions of the text on the melodic divisions marked in the editions of Barth, Ritscher, and Schmidt-Gorg, and of Christopher Page.10 4 The musical phrasing itself, however, is often conjectural. To avoid an unduly jagged appearance, 1 have diverged from it in pieces that are so melismatic that almost every word constitutes a separate 104Page's Sequences and Hymns (Antico Church Music, 1983) includes nos. 17, 19, 2.0, 2.8, 45, 49, 53, 54, and 64 in the presentedition. For the other pieces 1 have used the music as edited by Barth, Ritscher, and Schmidt-Gorg. In the case of the five antiphons discussed by Marianne Richert Pfau (nos. 3, 11, 14, 2.5, and 40) 1 have followed her suggestions about phrasing.

Introduction

61

melodic phrase. The lines in this edition are generally shorter than those in the Barth-Ritscher text and tend to highlight rhymes and other rhythmic features of the language. For the responsories, the manuscripts normally give only the initial words of the repetenda and the doxology. 1 have silently expanded these, noting only the cases where they are missing altogether. In the prose translations, however, 1 have omitted the doxology to save space. Translating the Symphonia has been a challenge. Poetry is defined all too well as that which gets lost in translation, but in the case of songs, half is already lost when the music is sacrificed. In a spirit of desperation, 1 ha ve resorted to the compromise of providing two sets of translations, one for students and one for readers of poetry. The prose translations, printed in small type at the bottom of the right-hand page, attempt to reproduce Hildegard's texts as literally as good English style wiH permit. With theír help, a reader wíth even rudimentary Latín should be able to make sense of the originals. 1 ha ve left all their idiosyncrasies intact. Line dívísíons in the prose correspond as dosel y to the Latín line breaks as possible. My verse translations, on the other hand, are frankly and blithely interpretive. Petrarch once advised Boccaccio that "the similarity [between text and translation] should not be like that of a painting or a statue to the person represented, but rather like that of a son toa father"-or daughter to mother, as the case may be. 105 In what I hope is a filial spirit, I have tried to convey the freshness and emotional vitality of Hildegard's songs in an idiom that is still fresh and vital to the modern reader, without deviating from their express content. In a more literal version, it is all but impossíble to evoke the genuine excitement of her poetry without regressing into a style that sounds either generically medieval or aesthetically preposterous. For instance, Hildegard's sprawling syntax, with its dependence on participles and relative clauses, tOSPetrarch, Epistolae Familiares 13.19, trans. Nicholas Kilmer, in Francis Petrarch: Songs and Sonnets from Laura's Lifetime (San Francisco, 1981): xv-

xvi. 1 would like to thank David Myers for this quotation and for his benignly scathing criticism.

lntroduction creates a space for ample and leisurcd meditation, contrasting with the elegant tightness of the Victorine sequence. In English, however, periodic sentences have a faded, pseudo-Miltonic cesonance that is totally alien to Hildegard's spirit. To take another example, our poet overuses superlatives. But in Latin the threat of an overwrought, hysterical tone is countered by the ringing magniloquence of lines such as "O dulcissima 1 atque amantissima mater, salve" (no. 8). The nearest equivalent in English-"Hail, O sweetest and most loving mother"-is saccharine injurious to any reader's poetic health. Medieval poetry in general favored hyperbole, and Hildegard in particular was no advocate of the vía negativa. Her way of approaching the ineffable was to make the strongest positive statement her tongue could express. Modero English, on the other hand, is a language of understatement, and in free verse it is almost a truism that less is more. So, in order to convey the rapt intensity of Hildegard's praise, 1 have actually had to tone down sorne of her expressions. Traditional metaphors pose another challenge. The symbolism of the medieval Church provided poets with an inexhaustible fund of material for devotion and imaginative play. When sensitively handled, this symbolism could be an aid rather than a barrier to fresh vision. But the risk of staleness is ever present, especially with the most ubiquitous images: the Holy Spirit is a dove, Mary a flowering branch, and so forth. 1 have tried to revivify sorne of these metaphors by expanding images that Hildegard presents but then fails to develop: Hodie aperuit nobis clausa porta quod serpens in muliere suffocavit. (no. 1 x)

The closed gate of the temple (Ezek. 44:2) signifies Mary's virginity, open to Christ alone and thereby opening-what? "That which the serpent choked in the woman." Although the general drift is clear, the exact sense defies explanation; how can the same

Introduction unspecified entity be first "choked" and then "opened"? A slight expansion will clarify the image: Today a closed portal has opened to us the door the serpent slammed on a woman. On the other hand, 1 ha ve tried to avoid excessive clarity when the original is enhanced by its phantasmagoria of mixed metaphors, as in "O cohors milicie floris" (no. 33) and "O spectabiles viri" (no. 31). Readers of the Symphonia will find passages of great simplicity as well as sorne that appear strained and mannered. 1 have attempted to recreate each piece in an appropriate tonality, even at the price of a few obvious transpositions. As Diehl observes, medieval religious poets were themselves engaged in a kind of "translation"-"a concentration on finding a way to render something already said into words that a new audience will understand, an overall function of representing the original to the audience." 106 One technical term for this process was, fittingly enough, conversio. For the rest, the reader should bear in mind that mere words, even in their original tongue, cannot faintly approximate the experience of music and prayer which is the Divine Office. So the English poems in this volume should be read less as translations in the normal sense than as adaptations for a wholly new medium. Whether they cast a fleeting shadow of the seer's living light or whether they send the read~r back in indignant )ove to the originals, they will have accomplished their task. t06Diehl, Religious Lyric 13.

List of Manuscripts

D R

S Vt

Dendermonde, Belgium, St.-Pieters-&-Paulusabdij Cod. 9 (Rupertsberg, c. II75) Wiesbaden, Landesbibliothek Hs. 2., "Riesenkodex" (Rupertsberg, 1 1So-1 190) Ra Scivias, fols. 1 3 2 va_ 1 33 rb Rb Miscellany, fols. 404'b-4o¡va Re Symphonia, fols. 466•a-47gva Stuttgart, Landesbibliothek Cod. Theol. Phi l. 2. 53 (Rupertsberg, St. Disibod and Zwiefalten, 1154-II70) Vienna, Nationalbibliothek Cod. 881 (Rupertsberg, 1164II70)

V2

Vienna, Nationalbibliothek Cod. 963 (St. Maria in Rommersdorf, 13th century)

V3

Vienna, Nationalbibliothek Cod. 1016 (13th century)

Order of Songs in the Manuscripts

D = Dendermonde, Belgium, St.-Pieters-&-Paulusabdij Cod. 9 (Rupertsberg, c. 1175). R = Wiesbaden, Landesbibliothek Hs. 2., "Riesenkodex" (Rupertsberg, u8o-II90). The column marked "R" refers to the Symphonia as it appears in R, fols. 466r•-478va, The Scivias (col. 1) appears in R, fols. 132.v8 -133rb, and the miscellany (col. 4) in R, fols. 404•b-407va.

1.

2..

3· 4· 5. 6. 7. 8. 9· 10. 11. 1 .1.

1 3.

14. 1 5.

16.

lncipit O vis eternitatis O virtus Sapientie O quam mirabilis O pastor animarum O cruor sanguinis O magne Pater O eterne Deus Ave Maria O darissima mater O splendidissima gemma Hodie aperuit Quía ergo femina Cum processit factura Cum erubuerint O frondens virga O quam magnum miraculum

Scivias

D

R 1

Miscellany 10

4

1

5 6

12.

7

11

1

2.

6

2.

3 17

2.2.

18

2.3

3 4

5

6 7 8 9

10 12.

IJ

14 15

10 11

2.4

2.5

16

13 2.0

65

Order of Songs in the Manuscripts

66 Incipit 17. Ave generosa 18. O virga mediatrix 19. O viridissima virga 20. O virga ac diadema 21. O tu suavissima virga 22. · O quam preciosa 23. O tu illustrata 2.4. Spiritus sanctus vivificans 2.5. Karitas habundat 26. Laus Trinitati 27. O ignee Spiritus 28. O ignis Spiritus Paracliti 29· O gloriosissimi lux vivens 30. 0 VOS angeli 31· O spectabiles viri J2. O vos felices radices 33· O cohors milicie floris 34· O lucidissima apostolorum 35· O speculum columbe 36. O dulcis electe 37· O victoriosissimi 38. Vos flores rosarum J9· O vos imitatores 40. O successores 41. O mirum admirandum 42. O viriditas digiti Dei 4J· O felix anima 44· O beata infantia 45· O presul vere civitatis 46. O felix apparicio 47· O beatissime Ruperte 48. Quia felix puericia 49· O Ierusalem )O. Mathias sanctus )l. O Bonifaci )2. O Euchari columba 53· O Euchari in Jeta vía 54· Columba aspexit 55· O pulcre facies ;6. O nobilissima viriditas 57· O dulcissime amator s8. O Pater omnium

Scivias

D 12.

2.

3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 12 11

IJ 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 2.1 2.2 23 24 2) 26 27 JI J2 33

34

28 2.9

JO 35 J6 J7

IJ 14

J8 J9 40 41

R

Miscellany

s6

14 19 18 15

53 55 54

19 20 11 8 9 52. 5I

21 22. 2J 24 25 26 27 28 2.9 JO 31 Jl. 33

26 2.1

17 16

34 35

J6 59 J7 J8 J9 6J 57 ;8 6o 61 62. 40 41 66 67

2. 3 1

4 5

Order of Songs in the Manuscripts lncipit 59· 6o. 61. 62.. 63. 64.

6s.

66. 67. 68. 69.

Rex noster promptus Spiritui sancto O rubor sanguinis Favus distillans In matutinis laudibus O Ecdesia Cum vox sanguinis O virgo Ecclesia Nunc gaudeant O orzchis Ecclesia O choruscans lux stellarum

67 Scivias

D

R

42. 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

46 43 44 42. 45 64

so

6s

47 48 49

so

Miscellany

7 8 9

Appendix The Symphonia and the "Epilogue to the Life of Saint Rupert"

The text printed in Cardinal J.-B. Pitra's Analecta sacra under the title of "Epilogus ad Vitam S. Ruperti" (pp. 358-68) is in fact a miscellany of songs, homilies, letters, and dramatic materials, sorne of which appear independently in other manuscripts. Only the first three of its twenty-six lyrics have anything to do with Saint Rupert, so the tide is evidendy a misnomer. However, in the Riesenkodex the text follows Hildegard's Vita S. Ruperti without a break (fols. 404r-407v), giving the impression that it is part of the same composition. The songs are written continuously and are in no way distinguished from the surrounding prose. The existence of this baffling text raises severa) questions of interest to students of Hildegard's poetry. For instance, when was the miscellany compiled, by whom, and for what purpose? What were its original components, and in what contexts were they composed? Most important, are the song-texts in the miscellany prior or posterior to those in the Symphonia? And how are the significant differences to be explained? Not all these questions can be answered conclusively at the present stage of research. As a necessary first step, however, we can begin by dividing the miscellany into its component parts. The text as it appears in the Riesenkodex and in Pitra's edition seems to comprise at least ten independent segments: 68

Appendix (a) three songs that may form a genuine "epilogue to the life of Saint Rupert" (nos. 49, 46, 47); (b) a prose text on creation, fall, and redemption with incipit "Primus sonus ita permansit," including the lyrical piece "O Verbum Patris" (Pitra, section 1); (e) a group of three lyrics dealing with nuns as brides of Christ: "O Fili dilectissime" (a prayer of Mary) followed by the "Symphonia virginum" and "Symphonia viduarum" (nos. 57, 58), along with "O magne Pater" (no. 6) and "O factura Dei" (Pitra, section 11); (d) a short dramatic exchange concerning schism, followed by three antiphons on the Church (nos. 66, 67, 68; Pitra, section 111); (e) three prayers to Christ and the Father (nos. 1, 5, 4) and three songs to the Virgin (nos. 15, 17, z.o), connected by a short prose text (Pitra, section IV); (f) a prose text on salvation history, followed by a sequence and hymn to the Holy Spirit (nos. z.8, 2.7; Pitra, section V); (g) a collection of political prophecies addressed to the Rupertsberg nuns (Pitra, section VI, p. 36 3); (h) a text in praise of Mary with incipit "Spiritus sanctus," including the lyrical piece "O magna res" and nine Marian songs (nos. 19, 18, 16, 2.3, 8, 9, 11, u, and 2.2.; Pitra, section VI, p. 364); (i) a general homily directed to the nuns (Pitra, section VII); (j) a more specific homily in which Hildegard chastises the nuns for poor discipline and exhorts them to stricter observation of the Rule (Pitra, sections VIII-IX). The segments are linked together with formulas such as "Iterumque vox de celo sonabat," which may be editorial. 1 have discoveted two of these segments to date in other manuscripts, where they appear among Hildegard's correspondence. "Primus sonus" {b) appears in the early manuscript S, folio :t8v, and in V3 , folio n6r, as an epistle ending with the prayer formula "Tu autem rex" in place of the lyrical "O Verbum Patris." The same manuscripts contain a letter with the incipit "Dominus dicit filiabus suis: In antiquo tempore Spiritus sanctus," continuing with the rest of {h) through "O magna res" (V3 , fol. 12.1r-v); S, folios 53v-54v, continues with the nine Marian songs. Lieven Van Acker's forthcoming edition of Hildegard's correspondence for the Corpus Christianorum: continuatio mediaevalis may reveal

Appendix

70

additional sources for these so-called letters. Once the miscellany can be confidently broken down into its components, it may be easier to assess the place of the Symphonia lyrics in the liturgical life of the Rupertsberg. As for dating, the internal evidence is not conclusive but points to the late 1 1 sos. The three songs for Saint Rupert (a) form a fitting appendix to his vita, which Hildegard wrote with the double purpose of reviving the saint's cult and establishing her monastery's right to the lands that she claimed as his patrimony. The saint's life is linked with the songs by a passage recounting the decay and abandonment of Rupert's original monastery and the dispersion of its lands. Hildegard then refers to "a few vineyards belonging to the [former] church" of St. Rupert, which she and her nuns had bought from Bishop Hermano of Hildesheim and his brother Bernard (PL 197, 1092.a). Hermano did not become bishop until 116 2., but the sale evidently too k place in 11 55, a plausible date for the vita. 1 The episcopal title would have been added by a later scribe. The antiphons and prose text in (d) refer toa schism that could ha ve been the one precipitated by Arnold of Brescia in 1155 (see Commentary, no. 66). In homily (j), Hildegard again mentions schism, lamenting "the spiritual people who have torn [Christ's] robe and divided [his] garment," but she adds that "the time of ultimate schism (plenitudinis schismatum) has not yet come." Both allusions could refer to the papal schism provoked by Frederitk Barbarossa in 1159, except that "Nunc gaudeant" (no. 67) celebrates the restoration of unity, which did not occur until Hildegard was 79· So here we ha ve either a firm date of 11 55 or a perplexing terminus a quo of 11 59· In the same segment (j), Hildegard complains about the worldliness of her nuns, which she says God "suffered for eight years, but for five years kept silent; for three years, however, [he] chastised them inwardly and outwardly." The chastisements pretMainzer Urkundenbuch, ed. Peter Acht (Darmstadt, 1968), vol. 2., pt. 1, p. 415 (no. 2.30). A charter from Archbishop Arnold of Mainz, dated May us8, confirms the purchase. Hildegard's note in the V ita S. Ruperti identifies Hermano

and Bernard as the sellers, but Bernard died in payment made to his sons.

11

5s and the charter indicates a

Appendix

71

sumably induded their strife with the monks of St. Disibod as well as Hildegard's severe illness in the mid-1 1 sos, during which she both saw and tasted the purgatorial sufferings described in her Book of J:.ife's Merits (Pitra 367-68). Homily (j) therefore dovetails with the preface to that book and with the memoirs recorded in Hildegard's Vita. lf the "eight years" began with the nuns' migration in 1150, the text could ha ve been written no earlier than 1 158, when Hildegard began writing the Book of Life's Merits. The various parts of the miscellany, then, appear to have been composed in the late 11 sos. We must next consider when the miscellany itself was compiled. The earliest manuscript of the complete text appears to be the Riesenkodex (n8os); but the other manuscript copy (V2 ), while later, may be based on an older archetype. 2 In both sources the text is untitled, although in V2 it begins with a new initial (fol. 155r) after the three songs to Saint Rupert. Since the compilation of these diverse materials serves no apparent purpose, one can only assume that it was made by an editor of Hildegard's Gesamtwerk who wished to lose no scrap of inspired writing but knew nothing about the original context or purpose of these texts. In Die Echtheit des Schrifttums der hl. Hildegard (I9S6), Schrader and Führkotter proposed the abbess's nephew Wezelinus, provost of St. Andreas in Cologne, as principal editor of the Riesenkodex. More recently Van Acker has suggested that the earliest recension of Hildegard's letters, the archetype of V2 , dates back to Volmar's lifetime. Any one of her secretaries may have found a number of lyrical and homiletic fragments among Hildegard's "unpublished" papees, sensed a general affinity among them, and decided to copy the collection faute de mieux among the abbess's letters. 3 The frequent address, "o filiae meae," may have inspired 1 This manuscript (Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 963) dates from the thirteenth century. It contains many errors not found in R, and on folio 1 s9• there is an interpolation from the Ordo virtutum which R lacks. See Lieven Van Acker, ..Der Briefwechsel der hl. Hildegard von Bingen," Rei!Ue bénédictine 98 (1988): I.p-68. There are two fifteenth-century copies of the R lener collection: British Ubrary, Cod. Add. IJI02. and Harley 172.s. There is a copy of the letters from V2 in Trier, Stadtsbibliothek 72.2.. 3'fhe original compiler may even havc been Guiben of Gembloux, who became Hildegard's secretary in II77 and remained at the Rupensberg until n8o. It is

Appendix the hypothesis that the documents were episdes to Hildegard's congregation, although sorne are patently homilies. The placement of the miscellany in the epistolary section of the Riesenkodex should not be taken too seriously, however, forseveral short works such as the Vita S. Ruperti and an exposition of the Athanasian Creed are placed there as well. So in fact are Hildegard's public sermons. 1 have suggested above that the component texts were originally liturgical transcripts recording the lyrics that Hildegard composed for particular celebrations, the homilies she preached, and, in sorne cases, dramatic scenarios that the nuns performed. This hypothesis, based on an old speculation of Cardinal Pitra, seems to account best for the fragmentary nature of the collection and the alternation of lyrics with didactic and homiletic prose. If such was the case, however, the celebrations probably occurred during the 1 1 sos. A compiler reviewing the texts two or three decades later, and one who was nota member of the community, may well have failed to recognize the origin of the material and may not even have realized that it included song-texts. Since the Symphonia itself was copied for the Riesenkodex by a different hand, the two scribes collaborating on the same grand project might not have known that they were duplicating material. The question of priority must rest on a close comparison of the song-texts as they occur in the Symphonia and the miscellany. Perhaps the greatest difference, apart from the absence of music, líes in the omission of liturgical cues from the miscellany. Responsories are copied without their repetenda or doxologies, hymns without the amen, and other pieces without the alleluia. The liturgical hodie in no. 1 1 is replaced by nunc, and in five pieces the first person plural, appropriate to a praying community, is replaced by a more neutral third person (nos. 4, 5, 11, 15, 27). In two pieces, nos. 57 and 67, the miscellany text includes "prosy" connectives (ideo, enim, autem) which are less appropriate to liturgical chant and do not appear in the Symphonia. Finally, the noteworthy that in the R miscellany Saint Rupert's name is consistently spelled robertus, the form current in Guibert's diocese of Liege, as opposed to the German forms rupertus in the Symphonia MSS. and Ruoppertus in V2.

Appendix

73

sequence "O Ierusalem" (no. 49) in the miscellany includes an entire strophe that does not appear in the Symphonia. The strophe is of purely local and historical interest to the nuns (it describes their migration from the monastery of St. Disibod to the Rupertsberg) and obviously does not belong in a sequence intended for widespread liturgical use. These differences suggest that the miscellany consists of rough, "in-house" transcriptions that Hildegard later revised to make them more suitable for liturgical celebrations outside the Rupertsberg. In her revisions she formalized the liturgical genre of each piece, substituted the more prayerful nos for the impersonal mundus or homines, polished the texts, and excised one obscure topical reference. It is also possible that the text-forms that survive in the miscellany predate the composition of the music, for it seems unlikely that Hildegard would delete several words and a whole strophe from the text if she had already created the melodies. Admittedly, however, the evidence is too thin to render these conclusions anything more than tentative speculations. Whether or not the miscellany is prior to the Symphonia, it is clear that we are dealing with two independent recensions of the song-texts. Aside from the differences discussed above, I have counted nine "neutral," non-trivial variants where the miscellany texts in R"' and V2 agree against the Symphonia texts in D and Re. In addition, the two recensions were evidently corrected by different hands, for the Symphonia text contains five grammatical errors that are corrected in the miscellany, and the latter has three obvious errors that are corrected in the Symphonia. All these mistakes, unlike the purely scribal blunders, may be "authentic" in the sense that Hildegard's own grammar was notoriously shaky, and she often acknowledged her dependence on copy editors. I have attempted to draw some broader conclusions from this analysis in the Introduction, pp. 9-1 1 above. M y hope is that this preliminary investigation will spur other scholars to greater interest in this fascinating and neglected text.

Music and Text in Hildegard's Antiphons BY

MARIANNE RICHERT PFAU

In her collection known as Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum, Saint Hildegard provides us not only with a wealth of poetic material, wide-ranging in scope and subject matter, but also with an extraordinary profusion of ecdesiastical song. These "novel songs," for which she was recognized as early as 1148,1 present a musical repertory just as unique and in many ways just as challenging to the modero sensibility as the poetry of the Symphonia. Although it is vital to apply specialized knowledge to each facet of Hildegard's artisric creation-that is, to treat the poetic texts from linguistic and literary points of view, and the music from an informed musical perspective-such separation of text and music should not be allowed to obscure the fundamental unity of the artwork. Ideally, literary and musical analysis should merge in a final interpretation of any individual song as well as of the repertory as a whole. Analyses of Hildegard's compositions have tended to caneentrate either on text or on music, focusing on one to the exdusion of the other. But the interaction between the two elements and 1Peter 11.

74

Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1 970):

1

s3, n.

Music and Text in Hildegard's Antiphons

75

their mutual enrichment has hardly been addressed. 2 To fully appreciate the beauty of this work it is essential to experience text and music as an aesthetic whole, as the unity it was for Hildegard. The general issue of text-music relations in medieval composition demands careful scrutiny. As a result of the probing work of Ritva Jonsson and Leo Treitler, it is now impossible to uphold the old view that the medieval composers were supposedly indifferent to the texts they were setting. 3 These authors ha ve argued to the contrary, positing a most intimate relationship of text and music in cantus that rests primarily on syntactic parallels rather than on affect. An integrated approach to music and text is particuhirly appropriate for Hildegard's compositions because of her claim to have received these pieces in her visions. Although the fact that many of the texts survive in a prose context without music as well as in the musical context of the Symphonia makes this claim difficult to interpret,4 1 will proceed on the assumption that Hildegard actually heard her pieces as text-music compounds, as unified expressions of the divine inspiration that sustained her. Such a view of Hildegard's songs also accords with the medieval conception of melody as a movement of the voice, as cantus declaiming language through melodic inflections, which is the basis of all medieval Westem notational systems. 5 Any attempt to bring the intimate connection of text and music ZA notable exception is the discussion by Barbara Thomton (Ordo virtutum, Sequentia Ensemble [Deutsche Harmonia mundi, 1981], jacket notes). As a performer of this repertory, Thornton expresses the perspective of one who must of necessity confront the problems pertaining to both words and music. The interaction of words and music has not, however, been discussed from a theoretical perspective. Even John Stevens, in Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance, and Drama, IOJO-IJJO (Cambridge, 1986): 397-99, is silent on this issue as it relates to Hildegard's songs. lRitva Jonsson and Leo Treitler, "Medieval Music and Language: A Reconsideration of the Relationship," in Studies in the History of Music, vol. 1, Music and Language (New York, 1983): 1-2.3. •Peter Dronke, "Problemata Hildegardiana," Mitte//Qteinisches jahrbuch 16 (1981): 99-100. SLeo Treitler, "Reading and Singing: On the Genesis of Occidental MusicWriting," in Early Music History (New York, 1984), 4: 145-46.

76

Marianne Richert Pfau

in Hildegard's Symphonia into focus, however, must be rooted in a familiarity with her compositional style. When first approaching one of Hildegard's compositions, a modern audience might ask what it is that gives shape to the piece; how the composer projects a sense of form, syntax, balance; how she achieves variety or unity, contrast or resemblance, dynamic tension or repose. Further, one might wish to understand how these diverse elements cohere and how they unite to set the characteristic tone and expressive quality of a composition. The song "O successores" (no. 40) is in many ways a model of structural control. A listener who might initially be taken with the shifting expressive quality within the piece will soon become aware of the high degree of order that governs the melodic unfolding. The opening phrase fulfills the function of an intonation in that it sets up one central pitch-the final D-as a reference point for the piece as a whole. 6 In phrase 1 this D is repeatedly circumscribed from above (F-E-D) and below (C-D). lt thus constitutes the tonal fulcrum of each small melodic motion. While at first the intervallic span around this D-axis comprises no more than a third above anda tone below, the sound space widens over the course of phrases 2. and 3 to include a fifth above (D/a) anda fourth below (DI A). Phrase 4 gravitates toward the lower spectrum of this space in its slightly extended approach to the final. Thus, throughout the first four phrases, Hildegard explores and defines an overall sound space of an octave (A-a), placing the pitch on which all melodic motion comes to rest (D) in the center of this space. Soon, however, the upper registral boundary (a) seems too narrow a ceiling. Without any preparation, phrase 5 dramatically 6 The transeriptions of the eompositions provide the reading of the souree indicated. Variants are given in M.-1. Ritseher, OSB, Kritischer Bericht (Salzburg: Otto Müller Verlag, 1969). The layout offered here is determined by my analysis of the musical phrasing. Staves without clefs continue the previous phrase. Small note heads represent individual puncti. Following eommon praetiee, slurs reflect eompound neumes, liqueseent neumes are indieated by a slash, and b-flats over the staves are editorial. All analytical annotations appear in parentheses. Pitehes are labeled aeeording to the medieval gamut: Gamma A B C D E F G a b/b-flat e d e f g a' b' e' d'.

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expands as it departs from this former upper extreme into a new and higher register. For a while, this greatly enlarged vertical dimension (A-d) serves the new affective quality of the setting well. Phrase 6, which emphasizes the high range of this new sound spectrum, is somewhat balanced by the low phrases 7 and 8. But the last and longest phrase (9) breaks open even this ex-

78

Marianne Richert Pfau

tended space, catapulting up from the rising fifths of phrases 6, 7, and 8 to a new height (f). The definitive ascent of phrase 9 stands in notable contrast to the provisional one of phrase 6, and the high vocal extreme is immensely effective. eoming near the end of the piece, this final expansion creates a strong sense of clímax for the setting as a whole. Thus the sense of an overall formal dynamic in "O successores" derives in part from expanding sound spaces. But how the melodies move within each of these spaces is also significant and equally compositionally controlled. In the present antiphon setting those phrases which keep to the initiallimited spectrum characteristically display stepwise melodic motion, enlivened by sorne skips of a third, while those moving within the ensuing extended sound spaces exhibit large upward skips spanning the important fifths D-a and fourths a-(c)-d. The coordination of these two principles-narrow sound space with prevailing conjunct melodic motion (phrases 1 through 4), expanded space with disjunct motion (phrases s through 9)-in this antiphon setting not only signals a twofold overall formal scheme but is responsible to a large degree for investing this scheme with its sense of climax. From a doser perspective, too, the notion of sound space allows a dear perception of Hildegard's principies of internal ordering. Phrase 2. sets up a sequence of melodic events which becomes normative for the piece as a whole. The first melodic event [a] explores the space from the final to the fifth above (D-a), traversing it in terms of a simple and balanced melodic curve. The second event [x] constitutes a brief "dipping down" toA, placed near the middle of the phrase. A cadential event [y] concludes the overall melodic motion, approaching the final both from above (F) and from below (C). Throughout die piece as a whole the medial and the cadential units [x and y) occur together and are generally stable. The characteristic skips from e to A and back to e, because they are variably placed, serve to blur the boundaries between them. These events are structural insofar as they segment the setting into clearly distinguished musical phrases. Within each of the two major sections (phrases 1 through 4 and phrases 5 through 9) the

Music and Text in Hildegard's Antiphons

79

large-scale form relies heavily upon motivic resemblances. The layout of the musical example darifies these structural similarities, especially where surface details tend to hide the common underlying order. Despite the repetitive formal scheme, Hildegard's work produces an impression of melodic flexibility. This effect can be attributed to her skillful introduction of changes in surface detail. By adding or omitting individual pitches or pitch groups in the melodic patterns, Hildegard constantly stretches or contracts the melodic fabric. Elements e and d of phrase 5 form the basis for the soaring arch [e+, d] of phrase 9· In contrast, the three interna) elements of phrase 6-b, e, and d-are compressed and fused together in phrases 7 and 8. Finally, the cadential element [y] undergoes both pronounced expansions and contractions. The extremes appear in close succession at the ends of phrases 8 and 9 [y and y+]. As a whole, the setting provides a most lucid example of Hildegard's typically asymmetric melodic parallelisms, illustrating the composer's ability to enliven her motivic resonances through graceful melodic decoration. These examples of asymmetry in "O successores" show that such intriguing irregularities affect not simply melodic detail but, more important, the pacing of melodic events within the context of the musical process at large. 7 They give a characteristic proselike quality to this setting which unfolds against the highly structured formal background. But this proselike quality is' not simply a hallmark of Hildegard's compositional style; rather, it seems directly linked to the nature of the text she sets. The "irregular prose quality" sensed in the music is, in fact, a characteristic of the text, so the flexibility of melodic line is best understood as a response to textual idiosyncrasies. Similarly, the overall formal plan of the musical setting must be 7Previous analysis has tended to "reduce" Hildegard's compositional style to a patchwork of melodic stock motives, disregarding the dynamic aspects of an integrated musical process. See Ludwig Bronarski, Die Ueder der hl. Hildegard: Ein Beitrag z.ur Geschichte der geistlichen Musik des Mittelalters (Leipzig, 192.1); Joseph Schmidt-Gorg, "Die Gesange der heiligen Hildegard," in Pudentiana Barth, M.-1. Ritscher, and Joseph Schmidt-GOrg, eds., Hildegard von Bingen: Lieder (Salzburg, 1969): 9-16.

So

Marianne Richert Pfau

seen as a reflection of the text, for ít accords with a specific parsing of the poetry. A dear illustration of this text-music coordination can be seen at the juncture of phrases 4 and 5, that is, between the two major sections of the piece. Not only does Hildegard introduce a new melodic element [e] to mark the beginning of the new section, but phrase 5 is the only one in this setting which takes off from a new, unmediated tonal plane (the fifth a). In the context this subtlety suffices to create the comparatively strongest musical articulation. It is carefully coordinated with the strongest articulation in the text, signaled by the word sicut; thus the musical syntax can be said to parallel the inner structure of the text itself. The consistency of this parallel is evident in the musical layout, in the transcription that provides a parsing equally plausible for the poetic lines and for the musical composition. Another vital indication of text-music interaction is in the differentiation between neumatic and melismatic passages. The present antiphon setting departs only once from the prevailing dedamatory texture. Clearly, the singular melisma on agni in the final phrase (9) serves as much to provide a musically convincing and compositionally satisfying aesthetic dosure as to reflect the textual clímax with which the poem concludes. "O successores" makes it plain that an appreciation of Hildegard's musical decisions often relies upon considerations of textual aspects. In the antiphon setting "O quam mirabilis" (no. 3), we can see that Hildegard's musical response is similarly governed by textual characteristics, but the markedly different formal structure of this poem results in a rather different musical setting. The tripartite syntactic structure of this poem, which projects an image of divine foreknowledge, is delineated by two outer statements of praise (phrases 1-3 and 6-7) flanking a central expository truth (phrases 4-5). A number of subordinate units appear within this frame, all introduced by relative pronouns (que, quem, que). The smallest syntactic groups generally consist of two or three words. With its various hierarchical levels of syntax, "O quam mirabilis" is one of Hildegard's more complex antiphon texts.

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